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Irish Folk-History Plays 

By Lady Gregory 



First Series : The Tragedies 

Grania. Kincora. Dervorgilla 

Second Series : The Tragic Comedies 

The Canavans. The White Cockade. The 
Deliverer 



Irish Folk-History 

Plays 



By 

Lady Gregory, ^^''^ 



First Series 



The Tragedies 

Grania— Kincora— Dervorgilla 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

Ebe Ifnicfterbocfter press 

1912 



Or It 

1112- 



Copyright ipia 

BY 

LADY GREGORY 

These plays have been copyrighted and published simultaneously in the 
United States and Great Britain. 

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages. 

All acting rights, both professional and amateur, are reserved, in the United 
States, Great Britain, and all countries of the Copyright Union, by the author. 
Performances forbidden and right of representation reserved. 

Application for the right of performing these plays or reading them in public 
should be made to Samuel French, 28 West 38th Street, New York City, or a6 
Southampton Street, Strand, London. 



Tt;be Knfcfeerbocfter prew, tiew ]l?eck 






©CU309749 



THESE THREE PLAYS CONCERNING 
STRONG PEOPLE OF THE WORLD I 
OFFER TO THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
ONE OF THE WORLD'S STRONG MEN 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Grania I 

KiNCORA 69 

Dervorgilla 155 



GRANIA 



Persons 
Grania 
Finn 

Diarmuid 
Two Young Men 



Act I 

Scene: The scene is laid at Almhuin in Ireland, 
Time, evening. Inside a richly decorated tent; 
a fire in brazier centre, a high candlestick at 
each side; a table with round loaves and wine. 
An opening at each side of tent, Finn is 
leading in Crania; she is wearing a golden 
dress and jewels. Music and joyous shouts 
are heard outside. 

Finn: My five hundred welcomes to you, 
Grania, coming into Almhuin. 

Crania: I thank you, Finn. 

Finn: Who would be welcome if it was not 
the King of Ireland's daughter, that will be my 
wife to-morrow? 

Crania: Your people that were outside and 
on the road lighted all the district with fires as 
I came. 

Finn: We would have been better prepared if 
your coming was not so sudden at the last. You 
did not come too soon, that is a thing that could 
not happen. But the big house of Almhuin will 

3 



4 Grania 

not be set out fit for you till to-morrow, and it is 
in the tents of our captains you and your com- 
pany must be sheltered to-night. 

Grania: It was my father, before going to 
Lochlann, said he must leave me in a husband's 
care. 

Finn: Who would protect you if I would not? 

Grania: I am sure of that. Are you not the 
best of all the world's big men? 

Finn: They told me you could have made great 
marriages, not coming to me? 

Grania: My father was for the King of Foreign, 
but I said I would take my own road. 

Finn: He has great riches and a great name. 

Grania: I would have been afraid going to him, 
hearing talk of him as so dark and wild looking, 
and his shield tusked with the tusks of a boar. 

Finn: You were not in dread coming to me, 
and you so delicate and so cherished? 

Grania: I had an old veneration for you, hear- 
ing all my lifetime that you are so gentle to women 
and to dogs and to little children, and you wrest- 
ling with the powers of the world and being so 
hard in war. 

Finn: It would be strange any person not to 
be gentle with you. 

Grania: And another thing. I had no wish to 
go travelling forth and hither to strange countries, 
and by strange seas. I have no mind for going 



Grania 5 

through crosses. I would sooner pass my life at 
Almhuin, where I ever and always heard there 
are wide white halls and long tables, and poets 
and fine company. 

Finn: Your father has a good house. 

Grania: There was little to listen to but my 
father planning the wars in Lochlann. There was 
no pleasant stir in it, unless what there might be 
in myself. 

Finn: It may be you will tire of Almhuin itself 
after a while. 

Grania: There will be good company. I have 
heard talk of the men and the captains of the 
Fenians, of Oisin and Osgar and GoU, that came to 
meet me a while ago. 

Finn: The man you will think most of is not 
with them to-day, that is my own kinsman, 
Diarmuid. 

Grania: I heard of him often. They say him 
to be the best lover of women in the whole world, 
and the most daring in the war. 

Finn: He has a good name from gentle and 
simple, from the big man and from the poor. 
Those even that have no call to him, cannot but 
love him. 

Grania: It was he fought seven days and seven 
nights with the terrible wild ox upon the mountains. 

Finn: Any time I am tired or fretted, all he 
could do for me he would not think it enough. 



6 Grania 

Grania: Where is he at this time, that he did 
not come to meet me with the rest? 

Finn: I sent him to a far lonesome hill where 
I have a secret store of treasiires and of jewels. 
It is right there should be a good man to guard 
them upon the road. It is for you he is bring- 
ing them, he will be here within a short while. 

Grania: It is likely it is a man of that sort a 
woman would find it easy to love. 

Finn: Did you ever give a thought to any 
man in the way of love? 

Grania: I did — at least I think I did — but 
that was a long time ago. 

Finn: Who was he? Did he belong to your 
own place? 

Grania: I do not know. I never heard his 
name — but I saw him. 

Finn: Did you speak to him? 

Grania: No, he was but as if a shadow, that 
came for a moment and was gone. 

Finn: Tell me all the story. 

Grania: They had been hunting — there were a 
great many strangers. I was bade keep away 
from the hall. I was looking from a high window 
— then there was a great outcry in the yard — the 
hounds were fighting, the hounds the strange men 
had brought with them. One of them made as 
if to attack a little dog I owned at the time — I 
screamed out at the hounds. Then a yotmg man 



Grania 7 

ran out and beat them away, and he held up my 
little dog to me, laughing, and his cap fell off 
from his head. 

Finn: Did they not tell you his name? 

Grania: I was shy to ask them, and I never 
saw him again. But my thoughts went with him 
for a good while, and sometimes he came through 
my dreams. — Is that now what you would call 
love? 

Finn: Indeed, I think it is little at all you 
know of it. 

Grania: I heard often in the stories of people 
that were in pain and imder locks through love. 
But I think they are but foolishness. There was 
one of a lover was made go through a fire for his 
sweetheart's sake, and came out shivering. And 
one that climbed to his darling's window by one 
golden thread of her hair. 

Finn: There are many such tales and there are 
more in the making, for it is likely the tearing and 
vexing of love will be known so long as men are 
hot-blooded and women have a coaxing way. 

Grania: I asked the old people what love was, 
and they gave me no good news of it at all. Three 
sharp blasts of the wind they said it was, a white 
blast of delight and a grey blast of discontent and 
a third blast of jealousy that is red. 

Finn: That red blast is the wickedest of the 
three. 



8 Grania 

Grania: I would never think jealousy to be so 
bad a smart. 

Finn: It is a bad thing for whoever knows it. 
If love is to lie down on a bed of stinging nettles, 
jealousy is to waken upon a wasp's nest. 

Grania: But the old people say more again 
about love. They say there is no good thing to 
be gained without hardship and pain, such as a 
child to be born, or a long day's battle won. And 
I think it might be a pleasing thing to have a 
lover that would go through fire for your sake. 

Finn: I knew enough of the heat of love in 
my time, and I am very glad to have done with it 
now, and to be safe from its torments and its whip 
and its scourge. 

Grania: It being so bad a thing, why, I wonder, 
do so many go under its sway? That should be a 
good master that has so many servants and is so 
well obeyed. 

Finn: We do not take it up of ourselves but it 
sweeps us away before it, and asks no leave. 
When that blast comes upon us, we are but 
feathers whirled before it with the dust. 

Grania: It is a good thing surely, that I will 
never know an unhappy, unquiet love, but only 
love for you that will be by my side for ever. {A 
loud peal of laughter is heard outside.) What is 
that laughter? There is in it some mocking 
sound. 



Grania 9 

Finn: {Going to the door.) It is not laughter 

now — it is a merry outcry as if around some very 

welcome friend. It is Diarmuid that is come back. 

{Diarmuid comes in. Grania shrinks hack 

from him.) 

Diarmuid: I am here, Finn, my master. 

Finn: What way are you, Diarmuid? There 
is some wound upon your arm. 

Diarmuid: It is a wound I was given on the 
road. But all you sent me for is safe. 

Finn: I knew you would mind them well. But 
was that hurt cared and eased? 

Diarmuid: It is nothing to signify. I drove 
the robbers off. All is safe. They are bringing 
the bags in here. 

(Two fair -haired young men come in two or 
three times laying bags on floor durdng 
the next sentences.) 

I will stop here and mind them through the 
night time. I would sooner keep charge until you 
will open them for the wedding on the morrow. I 
will sit there by the hearth. They are jewels 
would be coveted by the witches of the lakes, or 
the sea-women sporting among the golden ribs 
and the wreckage of the ships of Greece. 

Finn: It is to a woman worthy of them they 
are to be given. 

Diarmuid: I am sure of that, indeed, and she 
being worthy to wed with you. 



10 Grania 

Finn: Come here, Grania, until I make you 
acquainted with the branch and the blossom of 
our young men. 

Grania: {Coming forward.) It is — who is it? 
{She gives a little cry and goes hack a step as 
Diarmuid takes off his cap,) 

Finn: What is it ails you, Grania, that you are 
turned to be so wild and so shy? 

Grania: It is that — that — ^he is woimded. 

Finn: You have lost your talk on the road, 
Diarmuid, you, that were always so ready to 
string words and praises for comely young women. 

Diarmuid: I had no time to wash away the 
dust and the sweat. I did not know Grania was 
in the place. You should have forewarned me. 

Finn: He thinks you are vexed because he is 
not settled out in handsome clothes. 

Grania: It is strange — it is all strange to me — 
I will get used to meeting strangers. Another time 
— in a very short while — my voice will be more 
steady — my heart will leave starting. 

Finn: You will get courage knowing you are 
a queen. Where, Diarmuid, is the crown I bade 
you bring? It is not the high crown of pearls 
from the far Indies I want, but the thin golden 
crown shaped like the rising sim, that I thought 
of late would be never used, and that I had been 
keeping till I met with my own queen and my 
bride. 



Grania ii 

Diarmuid: It is wrapped about with tanned 
marten skins and bound with purple thongs. 

Finn: ( Unwrapping it.) Come to me, Grania. 
{He puts the crown on her head.) Courage will 
come into yoiu* heart now, with this sign and 
token of your estate. 

Grania: I am tired. It is weighty on my head 
— it is time for me to be with myself only. I 
have seen too much company since morning. 

Finn: That is so, and I am much to blame, not 
taking better thought for you. Come to your 
women, they will bring you to your tent that is 
close at hand. You have travelled a long strange 
road, and to-morrow is your wedding day 1 

Grania: To-morrow? Could it not be put off 
for a while? This is but May, and no great luck 
in the moon. There is more luck in the last moon 
of July — or the first new moon after it. Put it off 
imtil that time. 

Finn: That cannot be. Yoiu* father looked to 
me to put you in your right place without delay. 
You must be my wife to-morrow. 

Grania: Must it be to-morrow? 

Finn: All the armies are gathered together for 
that, and the feasts are ready. You yoiu-self will 
be ready when you have taken your sleep through 
the night time. 

Grania: Sleep — sleep — ^yes, I will go sleep if I 
can. 



12 Grania 

Finn: Diarmtdd is tired as well as you. 

Diarmuid: I have no desire to sleep. I will 
sit and watch here till the dawn. 

{He sits down by the hearth, pulling cloak over 
his head. Grania turns hack to look at 
him from the door as Finn takes her out. 
After a moment Finn comes back and 
sits near fire.) 

Finn: Tell me, Diarmuid, is it right that a 
man past the mering of age should give any- 
thought to love? 

Diarmuid: It is right for a man with a great 
burden of care upon him to have a place of his 
own where he can let it fall from him. And what 
is a home or a house without a wife and a com.- 
panion at the hearth? 

Finn: That is so, and that is what I had in 
mind at the time this marriage was settled and 
pressed on, for the good of Ireland and my own 
good. But as to love, that is another thing. 

Diarmuid: It is another thing, sure enough. 

Finn: I thought myself on the far side of it 
and of its trouble and its joy. But now this 
yoting girl has come to me, so fearless, so man- 
nerly, so plain and simple in her talk, it seems to 
me I would wed with her, and she not a king's 
daughter but a poor girl carrying the bag. {Diar- 
muid nods, but is silent.) It is not the one way 
with you and me, Diarmuid, for many women 



Grania 13 

have offered you their beauty and themselves; 
but as for myself, there is no one I ever gave my 
heart to but was swept from me in some hard 
way. And this is come like good wine to the 
mouth that was filled for a long while with grey 
mist and rain. And indeed, indeed my heart 
leaps up with her. Is not that natural, Diarmuid, 
and she so well reared and so young? 

Diarmuid: It is natural, indeed. 

Finn: Would you not say her to be well 
shaped and of good blood and wise? 

Diarmuid: She is all that, indeed. 

Finn: It is not often I have known you to be 
so begrudging of praise. 

Diarmuid: What call have I to be praising 
her? I could tell you no more than you knew 
before, through your own heart and through your 
eyes. 

Finn: But, tell me this, now. Is she that is 
so airy and beautiful any sort of a fitting wife 
for me? 

Diarmuid: You are brave and she will put her 
pride in you. You are the best of all, and she is 
a woman would only join with the best. 

Finn: With all that, I would be well pleased 
if I could change my years for yours, Diarmuid. I 
would give you in their place all the riches I have 
ever won. 

Diarmuid: Such a woman will be a right head 



14 Grania 

for Almhtiin. She is used to a king^s house, she will 
be open-handed, and open-hearted along with that. 

Finn: I think, indeed, she will be a right wife 
for me, and loyal. And it is well that is so, for if 
ever any man should come between her thoughts 
and mine I would not leave him living, but 
would give him the sorrow of death. 

Diarmuid: There is no good lover in Ireland 
but would do the same, and his wife or his sweet- 
heart failing him. 

Finn: Yet, in the end there are but few do 
it ; for the thought of men that have passed their 
midday is mixed with caution and with wisdom 
and the work they have in hand, or weakness is 
gaining on their limbs. And as for youngsters, 
they do not know how to love, because there is 
always some to-morrow*s love possible in the 
shadow of the love of to-day. It is only the old 
it goes through and through entirely, because they 
know all the last honey of the summer time has 
come to its ferment in their cup, and that there 
is no new summer coming to meet them for ever. 
And so {he gets up and stirs fire) they think to 
carry that cup through life and death and even 
beyond the grave. But can I bring this young 
girl to be satisfied with that one love? 

Diarmuid: There is no one among the men of 
Ireland can stand against yotir will. It should 
be easy for you to keep a woman faithful. 



Grania 15 

Finn: Yet the story-tellers make out that 
love is the disturber; that where it is on the 
road it is hard to be sure of any woman at all 
or any friend. 

Diarmuid: It is I can give you out an answer 
to that. My master, you are sure of me. 

Finn: I am sure of you, indeed, and it is 
many a time you put yoiu: life in danger for 
my sake. 

Diarmuid: (Standing up.) I am your son and 
your servant always, and your friend. And now, 
at this marriage time, I will ask one asking. 

Finn: Who would get his desire and you not 
to get it? 

Diarmuid: I am tired of courts and of sports 
and of wars where we gain the day always. I 
want some hard service to put my hand to. 
There are the dark men of Foreign, their King 
has laid it down he will come and master Ireland. 
Let me go out now and put him down in his own 
country. 

Finn: I will give you leave, but not till after 
the wedding moon. 

Diarmuid: No, but let me go now, this very 
night, at the brink of dawn. 

Finn: No, but stop near me. You are more 
to me than any of my comrades or my friends. 

Diarmuid: It is a strange thing, the first 
asking I have made, you have refused me. 



i6 Grania 

Finn: Go then and take yotir own way, and 
my blessing go with you. 

Diarmuid: I thank you for that leave. 
Finn: But you will be tired out before morn- 
ing. You have been on the road these three days, 
you got no sleep last night. 

Diarmuid: I am drowsy enough and tired, 
but I will go. 

Finn: Lie down over there upon the otter 
skins. I will sit here by the fire and keep a 
watch in your place. 

Diarmuid: Make a promise then, to wake me 
at the first whitening of the dawn. 
Finn: I will do that. 

{Diarmuid lies down on skins and sleeps, 

Finn looks at him a moment and covers 

him, then puts out candles and sits down 

where Diarmuid had been sitting, pulling 

his cloak over his head. Silence a moment^ 

Grania comes in.) 

Grania: {In a low voice.) Diarmuid! {No 

answer.) Diarmuid! {She comes nearer to Finn 

and speaks a little louder.) Diarmuid, help me! 

{Finn slightly moves) Give me your help now. I 

cannot wed with Finn. I cannot go to him as his 

wife. I do not know what has happened — ^half 

an hour ago I was content to go to him. You 

came in — I knew you — it was you I saw that day 

at Tara — my heart started like a deer a while 



Grania 17 

ago. There is something gone astray — the thought 
of Finn is different. What way could I Hve beside 
him and my heart, as I am thinking, gone from 
him? What name might I be calling out in my 
sleep? {She goes close to Finn and puts her hand 
on his shoulder.) Have you no way to help me, 
Diarmuid? It would be a terrible thing, a wedded 
woman not to be loyal — to call out another man's 
name in her sleep. {Finn gets up and goes back 
into shadow.) Oh, do not turn away from me! 
Do not leave me to the marriage I am in dread 
of. You will not help me? Is it you, Diarmuid, 
are failing me, you that came to my help that 
other time. Is it to fail me you will now? And 
is it my fault if this strange thing has come upon 
me, and that there is as if no one in all the world 
but you? You are angry with me and vexed, and 
it is a bad day, the day I came into this place. 
But I am not ashamed. Was it my fault at all? 
I will light now this candle, I will dare to show 
you my face. You will see in that I am not come 
to you as a light woman that turns this way and 
that way, but that I have given you the love I 
never gave to any man and never will give to any 
other ! {She lights candle and holds it up.) 

Finn: {Sternly.) Grania! 

Grania: Oh! It is Finn! And where then is 
Diarmuid ! 

Finn: There he is before you. It is the boy 



1 8 Grania 

lying down and rising with me has betrayed 
me. 

Diarmuid: {Moving and starting up.) What 
is it? What has happened? Is that Grania? 

Finn: You were looking for her to come. She 
was ready and willing. You are well fitted to 
rear traitors to one another. 

Diarmuid: You are out of your wits. I 
had no thought she was coming here. What 
brought her? 

Finn: Did she come giving you her love tm- 
asked? I thought she was a king's daughter. 

Diarmuid: She is, and well worthy! 

Finn: What was her mother then? Was she 
some woman of the camp? (Pushes her from 
him,) 

Diarmuid: {Putting his arm round her,) I will 
not let any man say that. {Half draws sword,) 

Finn: My life is a little thing beside what 
you have taken ! 

Diarmuid: You are talking folly. You never 
foimd a lie after me in any sort of way. But 
the time courage was put in your heart there 
was madness furrowed in your brain! 

Finn: Was it every whole minute of your life 
you were false to me? 

Diarmuid: You would not have said that, the 
day I freed you from the three Kings of the Island 
of the Floods. 



i 



41 



Grania 19 

Finn: It is quickly you have been changed by 
a false woman's flattering words! 

Grania: It is not his fault! It is mine! 
It is on me the blame is entirely! It is best 
for me to go out a shamed woman. But I will 
not go knocking at my father's door! I will find 
some quick way to quiet my heart for ever. 
Forgive me, Finn, and I have more cause yet 
to ask you to forgive me, Diarmuid. And if 
there were hundreds brought together this day 
for my wedding, it is likely there will be at my 
bmying but the plover and the hares of the 
bog! {Goes towards door.) 

Diarmuid: {Seizing her.) I will not let you 
go out this way. I will not fail you! 

Finn: There is all yoiu* talk of faith to me 
gone down the wind! 

Diarmuid: I will not forsake her, but I will 
keep my faith with you. I give my word that 
if I bring her out of this, it is as your queen I 
will bring her and show respect to her, till such 
time as your anger will have cooled and that you 
will let her go her own road. It is not as a wife I 
will bring her, but I will keep my word to you, Finn. 

Finn; Do you give me your oath to that? 

Diarmuid: I do give it. 

Finn: It is likely it will soon be broken. 
Grania is no withered pitiful hag with the hair 
matted wild to her knees. 



20 Grania 

Diarmuid: It will not be broken. Let my 
own heart break and be torn by wild dogs before 
that promise will be broken at all. 

Finn: The moon is coming now to the full, 
and before its lessening you will have lied to me. 

Diarmuid: {Taking up a loaf.) Look at 
this cake of bread. I will send you its like, white 
and round and imbroken at every moon of the 
year, full moon and harvest moon, while I am 
along with her, as a sign my own oath is in the 
same way clean and whole and unbroken. 

Finn: It is the woman will make you break 
that swearing. There will be another telling bye 
and bye. 

Diarmuid: {Taking Grania^ s hands,) There 
is this league between us, Grania. I will bring 
you with me and I will keep you safe from every 
danger. But imderstand well, it is not as a 
wife I will bring you, but I will keep my faith 
with Finn. 

Grania: Do as is pleasing to you. I have 
made an end of askings. 

Diarmuid: Come out with me now, till I 
put you in some place of safety. 

Finn: You will find no safety in any place 
or in any Connacht comer north or west. And 
out in the big world itself, there is no one will 
give my enemy so much as shelter from the rain. 

Diarmuid: I know well I have earned enemies 



I 



Grania 21 

in the big world because I fought with all its 
best men for your sake. 

Grania: Oh, take me, take me away out of 
this! For it is hard treatment is falling upon 
me! 

Diarmuid: And I tell you, Grania, but that 
I am bound to Finn by my word I have given 
him, and by kindnesses past counting and out of 
measiu'e, it would be better to me than the riches of 
the whole world, you to have given me yoiu* love! 

Grania: I have given it to you indeed. {She 
puts up her face to he kissed,) 

Diarmuid: {Kissing her forehead.) That is the 
first kiss and it will be the last. 

Finn: You will give up your life as the charge 
for that kiss! 

Grania: Come out! Come out! The very 
blood of my heart is rising against him! 

Finn: I will not let you go! Let our wedding 
be here and now, and I will call in as my witnesses 
to that word GoU and Oisin and Osgar and the 
captains of the armies of the Fenians ! 

{Finn goes to door, blows horn, then turns 
towards Grania as if to seize her, sways 
and falls.) 

Grania Oh, is it death ! 

Diarmuid: It is but a weakness that took hold 
of him, with the scorching of his jealousy and its 
flame. 



22 Grania 

Grania: Come away before he will rise up and 
follow us. My father's horses are in the field 
outside. 

Diarmuid: Come out then to the hunting — 
for it is a long hunting it will be, and it is little 
comfort we will have from this out. For that is a 
man driven by anger, and that will not fail from 
our track so long as the three of us are in the 
living world! 

{The sound of many horns and shouts is heard 
at Right, Diarmuid opens door at Left, 
Grania goes out quickly. He follows 
with bowed head.) 

Curtain 



Act II 

[seven years after] 

Scene : Interior of a rough tent. The door opens 
on a wood outside. A bed strewn with rushes. 
Diarmuid lying on it asleep, Grania is moving 
about and singing. 

Grania: Sleep a little, a little little; 
Green the wild rushes under my dear. 
Sleep here quiet, easy and quiet, 
Safe in the wild wood, nothing to fear. 
{She stirs fire and puts some round cakes she 
has been making, to bake over it. Then 
comes to Diarmuid and puts her hand on 
him as she sings:) 
Waken darling, darling waken! 
Wild ducks are flying, daylight is kind; 
Whirr of wild wings high in the branches. 
Hazel the hound stands snuffing the wind ! 
Diarmuid: {Awaking and taking her hand.) 
There is a new light in your eyes — there is a new 
blush in your cheeks — there is a new pride stirring 

23 



24 Grania 

in your thoughts. The white sun of Heaven should 
be well pleased shining on you. Are you well 
content, Grania, my wife? 

Grania: I am well content indeed with my com- 
rade and my man. 

Diarmuid: And did you love me ever and 
always,. Grania? 

Grania: Did I not tell you long ago, my heart 
went down to you the day I looked from the 
high window, and I in my yoimg youth at Tara. 

Diarmuid: It was a long waiting we had for 
our marriage time. 

Grania: It was a long waiting, surely. 

Diarmuid: Let us put it out of mind and not 
be remembering it at all. This last moon has made 
up for all those seven years. 

Grania: It was a troublesome time indeed and 
a very troublesome life. In all that time we never 
stopped in any place so long as in the shades and 
the shelters of this wood. 

Diarmuid: It seems to me only one day we 
have been in it. I would not be sorry in this 
place, there to be the length of a year in the 
day. 

Grania: The young leaves on the beech trees 
have unfolded since we came. 

Diarmuid: I did not take notice of their growth. 
Oh, my dear, you are as beautiful as the blossom- 
ing of the wild furze on the hill. 



Grania 25 

Crania: It was not love that brought you to 
wed me in the end. 

Diarmuid: It was, surely, and no other thing. 
What is there but love can twist a man's life, as 
sally rods are twisted for a gad? 

Grania: No, it was jealousy, jealousy of the 
King of Foreign, that wild dark man, that broke 
the hedge between us and levelled the wall. 

Diarmuid: {Starting up.) Do not bring him 
back to mind! It was rage that cracked me, 
when I saw him put his arms about you as if to 
bring you away. 

Grania: Was it my fault? I was but gather- 
ing a sheaf of rushes for our two beds, and I saw 
him coming alongside of the stream to the pool. 
I knew him by the tusks on his shield and the 
bristled boar-skin cloak. 

Diarmuid: What was it ailed you not to call 
to me? 

Grania: You were far away — you would not 
have heard me — it is he himself would have heard 
my call. And I was no way afraid — I hid myself 
up in the branches of the big red sally by the 
pool. 

Diarmuid: That was a foolish place to go 
hiding. 

Grania: I thought myself safe and well hidden 
on the branch that goes out over the stream. 
What way could I know he would stop at that 



26 Grania 

very place, to wash the otter blood from his 
spear, and the blood from his hands, and the 
sweat? 

Diarmuid: If I had been near, it is his own 
blood wotild have splashed away in the pool. 

Grania: He stopped then to throw the water on 
his face — ^it was my own face he saw in the pool. 
He looked up of a sudden — he gave a great 
delighted laugh. 

Diarmuid: My lasting grief that I was not 
there, and my hand gripping his throat. 

Grania: He bent the branch — ^he Hfted me 
from it — ^he not to have caught me in his arms 
I would have fallen in the stream. 

Diarmuid: That itself might have been better 
than his hand to have rested on you at all! 

Grania: Then you were there — ^within one 
minute. You should likely have heard the great 
shout he gave out and the laugh? 

Diarmuid: I lifted my hand to strike at him, 
and it was as if struck down. It is grief to my 
heart that he escaped me! I would have crushed 
him and destroyed him and broken his carcase 
against the rocks. 

Grania: It was I myself struck your hand 
down. I was well pleased seeing you in that 
rage of anger. 

Diarmuid: If I had known that, it is likely 
I would have killed you in his place. 



Grania 27 

Crania: But you did not kill me. 

Diarmuid: What was it happened? I was 
as if blind — you were in my arms not his, — ^my 
lips were on the lips he had nearly touched, that 
I myself had never touched in all those seven 
years. 

Crania: It was a long, long kiss. 

Diarmuid: That moment was hke the whole 
of life in a single day, and yet it was but a 
second of time. And when I looked arotmd he 
was gone, and there was no trace of him and he 
had made away and I could not kill him. 

Crania: What matter? You should forgive 
him, seeing it was he brought us together at the 
last. You should help him to win another king- 
dom for that good deed. There is nothing will 
come between us now. You are entirely my own. 

Diarmuid: I am belonging to you, indeed, 
now and for ever. I will bring you away from 
this rambling life, to a place will be all our own. 
We will do away with this trade of wandering, we 
will go on to that bare shore between Burren 
and the big sea. There will be no trace of our 
footsteps on the hard flagstones. 

Crania: We were in that craggy place before 
and we were forced to quit it. To live on the 
wind and on the air you cannot. The wind is 
not able to support anybody. 

Diarmuid: We will get a currach this time. 



28 Grania 

We will go out over the waves to an island. 
The sea and the strand are wholesome. We 
shall sleep well, and the tide beating its watch 
around us. 

Grania: Even rout in those far Aran Islands 
we would be threatened and driven as happened 
in the time past. 

Diarmuid: But beyond Aran, far out in the 
west, there is another island that is seen but 
once in every seven years. 

Grania: Is that a real place at all? Or is it 
only in the nurses' tales? 

Diarmuid: Who knows? There is no good 
lover but has seen it at some time through his 
sleep. It is hid imder a light mist, away from 
the track of traders and kings and robbers. The 
harbour is well fenced to keep out loud creak- 
ing ships. Some fisherman to break through the 
mist at some time, he will bring back news 
of a place where there is better love and a better 
life than in any lovely comer of the world that 
is known. {She turns away.) And will you 
come there with me, Grania? 

Grania: I am wiUing to go from this. 
We cannot stop always in the darkness of 
the woods — but I am thinking it should be 
very strange there and very lonesome. 

Diarmuid: The sea-women will rise up giving 
out news of the Country-imder-Wave, and 



Grania 29 

the birds will have talk as in the old days. 
And maybe some that are beyond the world 
will come to keep us company, seeing we 
are fitted to be among them by our unchanging 
love. 

Grania: We are going a long time without 
seeing any of the people of the world, unless it 
might be herds and fowlers, and robbers that 
are hiding in the wood. 

Diarmuid: It is enough for us having one 
another. I would sooner be talking with you 
than with the world wide. 

Grania: It is Hkely some day you will be 
craving to be back with the Fenians. 

Diarmuid: I was fretting after them for a 
while. But now they are slipping out of mind. 
It would seem as if some soul-brothers of my 
own were calling to me from outside the world. 
It may be they have need of my strength to 
help them in their hurling and their wars. 

Grania: I have not had the full of my life 
yet, for it is scared and hiding I have spent 
the best of my years that are past. And no one 
coming to give us news or knowledge, and no 
friendly thing at all at hand, unless it might be 
Hazel the hound, or that I might throw out a 
handful of meal to the birds to bring me company. 
I would wish to bring you back now to some busy 
peopled place. 



30 Grania 

Diarmuid: You never asked to be brought 
to such a place in all otu" time upon the road. 
And are you not better pleased now than when 
we dragged lonely-hearted and sore-footed through 
the days? 

Grania: I am better pleased, surely — and it 
is by reason of that I would wish my happiness 
to be seen, and not to be hidden imder the 
branches and twigs of trees. 

Diarmuid: If I am content here, why would 
not you be content? 

Grania: It is time for you to have attendance 
again, and good company about you. We are 
the same here as if settled in the clay, clogged 
with the body and providing for its hunger 
and its needs, and the readying of the dinner 
of to-day and the providing of the dinner for 
to-morrow. It is at the head of long tables we 
should be, listening to the old men with their 
jokes and flatteries, and the young men mak- 
ing their plans that will change the entire world. 

Diarmuid: That is all over for me now, and 
cast away like the husk from the nut. 

Grania: They will be forgetting us altogether. 

Diarmuid: No, but they will put us into songs, 
till the world will wonder at the luck of those two 
lovers that carried love entire and imbroken out 
beyond the rim of sight. 

Grania: That may be. And some night at 



Grania 31 

the supper the men will turn their heads 
hearing that song and will say, "Is Diarmuid 
living yet?" or "Grania must be withered now 
and a great trouble to those that are about 
her.*' And they will turn to the women that 
are smiling beside them, and that have delicate 
hands, and Httle blushes in their cheeks, and that 
are maybe but my own age all the same, but 
have kept their young looks, being merry and well 
cared. And Grania and Diarmuid will be no 
more than a memory and a name. 
^ Diarmuid: {Taking her hand.) These white 
hands were always willing hands, and where, 
I wonder, was this discontent bom? A little 
while ago it was the woods you wanted, and 
now it is the palaces you want. 

Grania: It is not my mind that changes, it 
is life that changes about me. If I was content 
to be in hiding a while ago, now I am proud and 
have a right to be proud. And it is hard to 
nourish pride in a house having two in it only. 

Diarmuid: I take pride in you here, the same 
as I would in any other place. 

Grania: Listen to me. You are driving me 
to excuses and to words that are not entirely 
true. But here, now, is truth for you. All the 
years we were with ourselves only, you kept 
apart from me as if I was a shadow-shape or a 
hag of the valley. And it was not till you saw 



32 Grania 

another man craving my love, that the like love 
was bom in yourself. And I will go no more 
wearing out my time in lonely places, where the 
martens and hares and badgers run from my 
path, but it is to thronged places I will go, 
where it is not through the eyes of wild startled 
beasts you will be looking at me, but through 
the eyes of kings* sons that will be saying: "It 
is no wonder Diarmuid to have gone through his 
crosses for such a wife!" And I will overhear 
their sweethearts saying: "I would give the 
riches of the world, Diarmuid to be my own 
comrade.'* And otu* love will be kept kindled 
for ever, that would be spent and consumed in 
desolate places, like the rushlight in a cabin by 
the bog. For it is certain it is by the respect of 
others we partly judge even those we know 
through and through. 

Diarmuid: {Getting up and speaking gravely,) 
There is no going back for us, Grania, and you 
know that well yourself. 

Grania: We will go to my father's house — 
he is grown old, he will not refuse me — ^we will 
call to yotir people and to my people — ^we will 
bring together an army of our own. 

Diarmuid: That is enough of arguing. There 
is no sense or no reason in what you are saying. 

Grania: It is a bad time you have chosen to 
give up your mannerly ways. You did not 



Grania 33 

speak that way the day you found me in the 
hand of the King of Foreign. You would may- 
be be better pleased if I had gone with him 
at that time. 

Diarmuid: You are but saying that to vex 
and to annoy me. You are talking like an 
innocent or a fool. 

Grania: He made me great promises. A 
great place and power and great riches. _ 

Diarmuid: I can win you riches in plenty 
if that is what you are coveting in your mind. 

Grania: I cared little for his talk of riches — 
but — when he put his arms about me and kissed 
me 

Diarmuid: You let him leave a kiss upon 
your mouth? 

Grania: It as if frightened me — it seemed 
strange to me — there came as if a trembling in 
my limbs. I said: "I am this long time going 
with the third best man of the Fenians, and he 
never came as near as that to me." 

Diarmuid: {Flinging her from him.) Go then 
your own way, and I would be well pleased never 
to have met you, and I was no better than 
a fool, thinking any woman at all could give 
love would last longer than the froth upon the 
stream ! 

{The sound of a rattle is heard outside,) 

Grania: What is that? Who is it? 



34 Grania 

(Finn disguised as a beggar is seen at door.) 

Diarmuid: It is but a beggar or a leper. 

Finn: Is this a house is sheltering a hand- 
some yoting woman and a lathy tall yoimg man, 
that are not belonging to this district, and having 
no follower but a hound? 

Diarmuid: Who are you? Keep back from 
the door! f 

Finn: I am no leper if I am a beggar. And 
my name is well earned that is Half-Man — ^for 
there is left to me but one arm by the wolves, 
and one side of my face by the crows that came 
picking at me on the ridge where I was left 
for dead. And beyond that again, one of the 
feet rotted from me, where I got it hurted one 
time through a woimd was given me by treachery 
in the heel. 

Diarmuid : Take off that mask till I see your 
face. 

Finn: I will and welcome, if you have a mind 
to see it, but it is not right a lovely young lady 
to get a view of a bare gnawed skull, and that 
is what this catd covers. It is by reason of 
that I go soimding the rattle, to scare children 
from the path before me, and women carrying 
child. 

Diarmuid: If it is alms you are seeking i 
is a bare place to come, for we carry neither gold 
or silver, there being no market in the woods. 






Grania 35 

Finn: Not at all, not at all — I am asking 
nothing at all. Believe me, the man that sent me 
is a good payer of wages. 

Diarmuid: What call had he to send you here? 
We own nothing for any man to covet. 

Finn: With a message he sent me, a message. 
You to be the man and the yoimg woman I 
am searching after, I have to give a message 
and get a message. That is all the business 
I have to do. I will get fair play, never fear, 
from the man that sent me. 

Diarmuid: Tell me who is that man, till I 
know is he enemy or friend. 

Finn: You to see him you would not forget 
him. A man he is, giving out gold from his 
hand the same as withered leaves, and having 
on his shield the likeness of the rising sim. 

Grania: That can surely be no other than 
Finn. What did he want sending you? 

Finn: I will tell you that, and it is little I 
know why would he want it. You would not say 
him to be a man would be in need of bread. 

Grania: Tell out now what you have to tell. 

Finn: Would n't you say it to be a strange 
thing, a man having that much gold in his hand, 
and the sun in gold on his shield, to be as hungry 
after bread as a strayed cur dog would have nothing 
to eat or to fall back on, and would be yelping 
after his meal. 



36 Grania 

Diarmuid: Give out the message. 

Finn: It is what he bade me say: ''Tell that 
young woman," he said, "and that yoimgster 
with her," he said, "that on every first night of 
the rotind moon these seven years, there used 
to be a rotind cake of bread laid upon my road. 
And the moon was at her strength yesterday," 
he said, "and it has failed me to find on any 
path that cake of bread." 

Diarmuid: It is Finn that sent him! It is 
Finn is calling me to accoimt because I have for- 
gotten my promise to him, and my faith. 

Grania: He has come upon our track. We 
must go our road again. It is often we escaped 
him before this. I am no way afraid. 

Diarmuid: It is not fear that is on me, it is 
shame. Shame because Finn thought me a man 
would hold to my word, and I have not held to 
it. I am as if torn and broken with the thought 
and the memory of Finn. 

Grania : It is time to put away that memory. 
It is long enough you gave in to his orders. 

Diarmuid: I did that with my own consent. 
Nothing he put upon me was hard. He trusted 
me and he could trust me, and now he will never 
put trust in me again. 

Grania: It may not be Finn will be getting 
his commands done, and otu" friends gather- 
ing to our help. Let him learn that time, not 



Grania 37 

to thrust his hand between the wedges and the 
splint. 

Finn: {Who has been sitting crouched over fire.) 
Have you the message ready and the bread I was 
bade bring back to the champion that met me 
on the path? 

Grania: {Taking up one of the cakes.) It is 
best send it to him and gain the time to make 
our escape. 

Diarmuid: No, no more lying. I will tell no 
more lies to my master and my friend! 

{Diarmuid takes cake from Grania and flings 
it down, then throws himself on the 
bed and covers his face with his hands, 
Grania takes up cake, breaks it again and 
again, and gives it to Finn.) 

Grania: That is the answer to his message. 
Say to him that as that bread is broken and 
torn, so is the promise given by the man that 
did right in breaking it. Tell Finn, the time 
you meet him, it was the woman herself gave 
that to you, and bade you leave it in his hand 
as a message and as a sign! 

Finn: Take care now. Is that a right mes- 
sage you are sending, and one that you will not 
repent? 

Grania: It is a right message for that man to 
get. And give heed to what I say now. If you 
have one eye is blind, let it be turned to the 



38 Grania 

place where we are, and that he might ask news 
of. And if you have one seeing eye, cast it upon 
me, and tell Finn you saw a woman no way sad 
or afraid, but as airy and high-minded as a 
motmtain filly would be challenging the winds of 

March! 

Finn: I can tell him that, surely, and you 
not giving it out to me at all. 

Grania: And another thing. Tell him there is 
no woman but would be proud, and that oath 
being broken for her sake. And tell him she is 
better pleased than if she was a queen of the 
queens of the world, that she, a travelling woman 
going out tmder the weather, can turn her back 
on him this day as she did in the time that is 
past. Go now, and give that message if you dare 
to give it, and keep those words red scorched in 
your mind. 

Finn: I will bring that message, sure enough, 
and there will be no fear on me giving it out. 
For all the world knows Finn never took revenge 
on a fool, or a messenger, or a hotind. But it 
would be well for them that send it to bear in 
mind that he is a hard man — a hard man — a 
hard man, surely. As hard as a barren step- 
mother's slap, or a highway gander's gob. 

Grania: Go, go on your road. Or will you 
take food and drink before you go? 

Finn: Not at all^ I will eat in no man's house 



Grania 35 

or in any place at all, unless in the bats' feeding 
time and the owls', the way the terror of my face 
will not be seen. I wiU be going now, going my 
road. But, let you mind yourself. Finn does be 
very wicked the time he does be mad vexed. And 
he is a man well used to get the mastery, and any 
that think to go daring him, or to go against him, 
he will make split marrow of their bones. 

Diarmuid: {Looking up,) There might kind- 
ness grow in him yet. It is not big men, the 
like of him, keep up enmity and a grudge for 
ever. 

Finn: Who can know, who can know? Finn 
has a long memory. There is Grania he doted 
down on, and that was robbed from him, and 
he never threw an eye on any woman since and 
never will, but going as if crazed, and ransacking 
the whole country after her. As restless as the 
moon of Heaven he is, and at some times as 
wasted and as pale. 

Grania: It is time for him to leave thinking 
about her. 

Finn: A great memory he has and great 
patience, and a strong fit of the jealous, that 
is the worst thing ever came from the skies. 
How well he never forgave and never will forgive 
Diarmuid O'Duibhne, that he reared on his knee 
and nourished with every marrow-bone, and that 
stole away his wife from him, and is dead. 



40 Grania 

Crania: That is no true story. Diarmuid is 
not dead, but living! 

Finn; That 's my hearing of the thing. And 
if he is on the earth yet, what is he doing? 
Would you call that living? Screening himself 
behind bushes, running before the rustling of a 
wren on the nest. In dread to face his master 
or the old companions that he had. 

Grania: There is no man but must go through 
trouble at some time; and many a good man has 
been a stranger and an exile through a great share 
of his lifetime. 

Finn: I am no friend to Diarmuid O^Duibhne. 
But he to be my friend, I would think it a great 
slur upon him it being said a man that had so 
great a name was satisfied and content, killing 
hares and conies for the supper, casting at cranes 
for sport, or for feathers to stuff a pillow for his 
sweetheart's head, the time there is an army of 
the men of Foreign in Ireland. 

Grania: I can tell you it will not be long till 
he will be seen going out against them, and going 
against some that are not foreign, and he having 
an army of his own. 

Finn: It is best for him make no delay so, 
where they are doing every whole thing to drag 
the country down. 

Diarmuid: {Standing up.) I will go out and 
fight. I will delay no minute. 



Grania 41 

Grania: No, but do as I tell you. Gather 
your friends till you can make your own stand. 
Where is the use of one man only, however good 
he may be? 

Finn: A queer thing indeed, no queerer. Diar- 
muid, that was the third best man of the whole 
of the armies of the Fenians, to be plucking and 
sorting pigeon's feathers to settle out a pillow 
and a bed. 

Diarmuid: I will go as I am, by myself. 
There is no man living would let his name lie 
imder reproach as my name is under it. 

Grania: {To Finn.) Go quick — you have 
brought messages — bring another message for 
me, now, to the High King's house at Tara. 

Diarmuid: I will wait for no man's help. I 
will go. 

Grania: Is it that you will leave me? It is 
certain Finn has tracked us — we have stopped too 
long in the one place. If Finn is there his strength 
will be there. Do not leave me here alone to the 
power and the treachery of Finn ! It is in at this 
door he may be coming before the fall of night. 

Diarmuid: I will stop here. I will not leave 
you imder Finn's power for any satisfaction to 
myself. {To Finn.) Go, as you are bidden, and 
bring help from the King at Tara. 

Finn: Very good, very good. That now is the 
message of a wise housekeeping husband. 



42 Grania 

Diarmuid: I give my word it needs more cour- 
age at some times to be careful than to be for- 
ward and daring, and that is the way with me 
now. 

Finn: Maybe so, maybe so. And there is no 
wonder at all a common man to be tame and 
timid, when Diarmuid, grandson of Duibhne has 
a faint miserable heart. 

Diarmuid: That is the wicked lie of some old 
enemy. 

Finn: {Going to door,) Very likely, very likely; 
but maybe it would be better for Grania I was 
speaking of, to have stopped with the old man 
that made much of her, in place of going with 
the young man that belittles her. 

Grania: That is a slander and no true word. 

Finn: {At door,) Ha! Ha! Ha! It is a story 
makes great sport among gentle and simple in 
every place. It is great laughing is given out 
when the story is heard, that the King of Foreign 
put his arms about Grania's neck that is as white 
as a hoimd's tooth, and that Diarmuid saw him 
do it — and that the King of Foreign is living yet, 
and goes boasting on his road! {Goes out.) 

Diarmuid: {Fastening on sword.) Give that to 
me. {Points at spear.) 

Grania: {Throwing it from her.) Oh, stop with 
me, my darling, and my love, do not go from me 
now or forsake me! And to stay in the lonely 



Grania 43 

woods for ever or in any far desolate place, you 
will never hear a cross word or an angry word 
from me again. And it is for you I will wear my 
jewels and my golden dress. For you are my 
share of life, and you are the east and the west 
to me, and all the long ago and all that is 
before me! And there is nothing will come be- 
tween us or part us, and there will be no name 
but yoiurs upon my lips, and no name but my 
own spoken by your lips, and the two of us well 
contented for ever! 

Finn: {Comes hack and looks in at door.) It 
is what they were saying a while ago, the King 
of Foreign is grunting and sighing, grunting and 
sighing, aroimd and about the big red sally tree 
beside the stream! {He disappears. Diarmuid 
rushes out.) 

Curtain 



^1 



Act III 

[afternoon of the same day] 

Scene: In the same tent. Crania has put on her 
golden dress and jewels, and is plaiting gold 
into her hair. Horns and music suddenly heard ^ 
not very near. She goes startled to door, and 
falls back as Finn comes in. He is dressed as 
if for war and has his banner in his hand. 
He looks older and more worn than in the 
First Act. 

Finn: I have overtaken you at last, Grania. 

Crania: Finn! It is Finn! {She goes a step 
hack and takes up a spear.) 

Finn: It would be no great load upon you 
to bid me welcome. 

Crania: What is it has brought you here? 

Finn: Foolishness brought me here, and 
nature. 

Crania: It is foolishness for a man not to stop 
and mind his own estate. 

Finn: A wild bird of a hawk I had, that went 

44 



Grania 45 

out of my hand. I am entitled to it by honest 
law. 

Grania: I know yoiir meaning well. But 
hearken now and put yourself in a better mind. 
It is a heavy punishment you put upon us these 
many years, and it is short till we '11 all be in the 
grave, and it is as good for you leave us to go 
our own road. 

Finn: A queer long way I would have walked 
for no profit. Diarmmd is gone out from you. 
There is nothing to hinder me from bringing 
you away. 

Grania: There is such a thing. 

Finn: Is it your own weak hand on that spear? 

Grania: {Throwing it down) No, but your 
own pride, if it has not gone from you and left 
you snapping and angry, like any moon-crazed 
dog. 

Finn: If there is madness within me, it is 
you yoiu-self have a right to answer for it. But 
for all that, it is truth you are speaking, and I will 
not bring you away, without you will come with 
me of your own will. 

Grania: That will be when the rivers nm 
backward. 

Finn: No, but when the tide is at the turn. 
I tell you, my love that was allotted and fore- 
shadowed before the making of the world will 
drag you in spite of yourself, as the moon above 



46 Grania 

drags the waves, and they grumbling through the 
pebbles as they come, and making their own little 
moaning of discontent. 

Grania: You have failed up to this to drag or 
to lead me to you. 

Finn: There is great space for rememberings 
and regrettings in the days and the nights of 
seven years. 

Grania: I and Diarmuid stopped close to one 
another all that time, and being as we were with- 
out hearth or frolic, or welcome or the faces of 
friends. 

Finn: Many a day goes by, and nothing has 
happened in it worth while. And then there 
comes a day that is as if the ring of life, and 
that holds all the joy and the pain of life be- 
tween its two darknesses. And I am thinking 
that day has come, and that it will put you on 
the road to myself and Almhuin. 

Grania: You think I will give in to you be- 
cause I am poor in the world. But there is grief 
in my heart I not to have strength to drive that 
spear through you, and be quit of your talk for- 
ever. 

Finn: Would you think better of me if I had 
been satisfied to put this crown on some other 
woman's head, and it having rested upon your 
own for one moment of time? {Takes crown 
Jrom under his cloak and holds it up,) 



Grania 47 

Crania: It would have been best. I would be 
well pleased to see you do it yet. 

Finn: But I would not do that to gain the 
whole world entirely. And I to have my youth 
seven times over, it is after you I would come 
searching those seven times. And I have my 
life spent and wasted following you, and I have 
kissed the sign of yoiu* foot in every place all 
through Ireland. 

Grania: I have no forgiveness for you that 
have been a red enemy to my darling and my 
man. I have too long a memory of all the 
imkindness you have done. 

Finn: It is your fault if I did them. Every 
time the thought of kindness came to me, the 
thought of you came with it, and put Hke a ring 
of iron around my heart. 

Grania: It is turned to iron indeed. And 
listen to me now, Finn, and believe what I say. 
You to have hunted us through crags and bushes, 
and sent us out in the height of hailstones 
and of rain, I might overlook it and give you 
pardon. But it is the malice you showed, put- 
ting a hedge between myself and Diarmuid that 
I never will forgive, but will keep it against 
you for ever. For it is you left my life barren, 
and it was you came between us two through 
all the years. 

Finn: I did right doing that. There is no 



48 Grania 

man but would keep the woman he is to wed 
for himself only. 

Grania: It was your shadow was between us 
through all that time, and if I carry hatred 
towards you, I leave it on your own head. And 
it is little I would have thought of hardships, 
and we two being lovers and alone. But that 
is not the way it was. For the time he would 
come in, sweaty and sorefooted from the himting, 
or would be dull and drowsy from the nights of 
watching at the door, I would be down-hearted 
and crabbed maybe; or if I was kind itself, it 
would be like a woman would be humouring a 
youngster, and her mind on some other track. 
But we to have a settled home and children 
to be fondling, that would not have been the 
way with us, and the day would have been 
short, and we showing them off to one another, 
and laying down there was no one worthy to 
have called them into the world but only our 
two selves. 

Finn: You are saying what is not true, and 
what you have no right to say. For you know 
well and you cannot deny it, you are man and 
wife to one another this day. 

Grania: And if we are, it is not the same as 
a marriage on that day we left Almhuin would 
have been. It was you put him imder a promise . 
and a bond that was against nature, and he was 



Grania 49 

a fool to make it, and a worse fool to keep it. 
And what are any words at all put against the 
love of a young woman and a yoimg man? It was 
you turned my life to weariness, and my heart 
to bitterness, and put me imder the laughter 
and the scorn of all. For there was not a poor 
man's house where we lodged, but I could see 
wonder and mockery and pity in the eyes of the 
woman of the house, where she saw that poor 
as she was, and ugly maybe and ragged, a king's 
daughter was thought less of than herself. Be- 
cause if Diarmuid never left his watch upon my 
threshold, he never came across it, or never gave 
me the joy and pride of a wife! And it was 
you did that on me, and I leave it on your own 
head; and if there is any hatred to be found in 
the world, and it to be squeezed into one cup 
only, it would not be so black and so bitter as 
my own hatred for you! 

Finn: That hatred is as if crushed out of the 
great bulk of my love for you, that is heaped 
from the earth to the skies. 

Grania: I am not asking it or in need of it. 
Why would I listen to a story I have heard often 
and too often. 

Finn: But you will listen, and you will give 

heed to it. You came of your own free will to 

Almhuin to be my wife. And my heart went 

out to you there and then, and I thought there 

4 



so Grania 

would be the one house between us, and that 
it was my child I would see reared on your knee. 
And that was known to every one of my people 
and of my armies, and you were willing it should 
be known. And after that, was it a little thing 
that all Ireland could laugh at the story that I, 
Finn, was so spent, and withered, and loathsome 
in a woman's eyes, that she would not stop with 
me in a life that was full and easy, but ran out 
from me to travel the roads, the same as any 
beggar having seven bags. And I am not like 
a man of the mean people, that can hide his grief 
and his heart-break, bringing it to some district 
where he is not known, but I must live under that 
wrong and that insult in full sight of all, and 
among mockery and malicious whisperings in the 
mouth of those maybe that are shouting me! 

Grania: I have a great wrong done to you, 
surely, but it brings me no nearer to you now. 
And our life is settled, and let us each go our 
own course. 

Finn: Is it not a great wonder the candle you 
lighted not to have been quenched in all that time? 
But the light in yoiu- grey eyes is my desire for 
ever, and I am pulled here and there over hills 
and through hollows. For my life was as if cut 
in two halves on that night that put me to and 
fro; and the half that was full and flowing was 
put behind me, and it has been all on the ebb 



Grania 51 

since then. But you and I together could have 
changed the world entirely, and put a curb upon 
the spring-tide, and bound the seven elements 
with our strength. And now, that is not the way 
I am, but dragging there and hither, my feet 
woimded with thorns, the tracks of tears down 
my cheeks; not taking rest on the brink of any 
thick wood, because you yourself might be in it, 
and not stopping on the near side of any lake or 
inver because you might be on the far side; as 
wakeful as a herd in lambing time, my com- 
panions stealing away from me, being tired with 
the one corn-crake cry upon my lips always, that 
is, Grania. And it is no wonder the people to 
hate you, and but for dread of me they would 
many a time have killed you. 

Grania: If I did you wrong, did I do no 
wrong against Diarmuid? And all the time we 
were together he never cast it up against me 
that it was I brought him away from his com- 
rades, or, as he could have done, that I asked 
him without waiting for his asking. He never 
put reproaches on me, as you are reproaching 
me, now that I am alone and without any friend 
at hand. 

Finn : Diarmuid has no harm in his heart, and 
he would find it hard to do anything was not 
mannerly, and befitting a man reared in king's 
houses, if he is no good lover itself. 



5^ Grania 

Crania: Diarmuid that gave all up for love is 
the best lover of the whole world. 

Finn: No, for his love is not worth a reed of 
straw beside mine. 

Grania: His love knows no weakening at all. 
He would begrudge me to walk the road ! Listen 
to this now. The King of Foreign had put his 
arms about me — he had left but one kiss on my 
mouth — and for that much Diarmuid is gone out 
at this time to take his life ! 

Finn: Diarmuid to be a good lover, it is my 
own life he would have shortened. If he had 
any great love for you, it is I myself he would 
not have left living. 

Grania: You are belittling Diarmuid, and I 
will judge you by yoiu: own words. You boast 
that you are a better lover. Then why are you 
wasting talk here, and you having let him go out 
of your hand to-day? 

Finn : He is not gone out of reach of my hand. 

Grania : He is ! He is safe and gone from you. 
Would I have been so daring in talk, and I not 
certain of that? 

Finn: It is hard for any man to escape the 
thing was laid down for him, and that he has 
earned. 

Grania: It is no friend of yours he went out 
fighting. It is that foreign king. He will be well 
able to put him down. 



Grania 53 

Finn: It is not a man weakened with love 
that goes out to win in a fight. It is a foreign 
hand will do judgment upon him, but it was I 
myself sent him out to that judgment. 

Grania : That is not true ! It is a boast and a 
bragging you are making to threaten me. You 
would never dare to do it. He is of your own 
blood. 

Finn: You are beautiful and I am old and 
scarred. But if it was different, and I to be what 
I was, straight as a fiag-fiower, and yellow-haired, 
and you what the common people call out that 
hate you, wide and low-bom, a hedgehog, an ugly 
thing, I would kill any man at all that would 
come between us, because you are my share of 
the world and because I love you. 

Grania : You are speaking lies — I know it is a 
lie and that it was not you sent him out to that 
fight. It was not you, it was that sharp-tongued 
beggar, that spiteful crippled man. 

Finn : There is no man only a lover, can be a 
beggar, and not ashamed. 

Grania: It was not you — ^you were not that 
cripple. 

Finn: This is the hand where you put the 
broken bread. 

Grania: It was you sent Diarmuid out ! It was 
you came between us! It was you parted us! 
It was your voice he obeyed and listened to, the 



54 Grania 

time he had no ears for me! Are you between 
us always? — I will go out after him, I will call 
him back — I will tell him your treachery — he 
will make an end of it and of you. He will know 
you through and through this time. It will fail 
you to come between us again. 
(A heavy shout is heard.) 
Finn: Hush, and listen ! {Goes to the door.) 

Grania: What is it ? Let me find Diarmuid 

Finn: {Holding her hack.) It is Diarmuid is 
coming in. 

{Diarmuid' s body is carried in hy two fair- 
haired young men. They lay it on the 
bed and take off their caps. Finn looks 
at him, takes his hand, then lays it 
down and turns away.) ' 

Death and the judgment of death have over- 
taken him. 

Grania: {Bending over him.) Oh, Diarmuid, 
you are not dead! You cannot be dead! It is 
not in this hour you could die, and all well 
between us, and all done away with that had 
parted us! 

Finn: He is dead indeed. Look at that wound 
in his neck. He is bleeding and destroyed with 
blood. 

Grania: Come back to me, come back, my 
heart's darling, my one love of the men of the 
world! Come back, if but for one moment of 



I 



Grania 55 

time. Come back, and listen to all I have to 
tell. And it is well we have the world earned, 
and is it not a hard thing, a young man to die 
because of any woman at all casting an eye on 
him, and making him her choice, and bringing 
her own bad luck upon him, that was marked 
down for her maybe in the time before the world. 
And it is hunger I gave you through my love, and 
it is a pity it is around you it was cast, and it is 
a pity now, you to be loosed out of it. And it 
would have been better for you, some girl of 
the ducks and ashes, hard reared and rough, to 
have settled out your pillow, and not myself that 
brought ill-will upon you, and the readying of 
your grave! 

Finn: Where is the use of calling to him and 
making an outcry? He can hear no word at all, 
or understand anything you say. And he has 
brought with him a good memory of happiness and 
of love; and some of the world's great men bring- 
ing with them but empty thoughts of a life that 
was blasted and barren. t 

Grania: Ochone, my grief ! For all is at an end, 
and you are clean wheat ground and bruised and 
broken between two hard stones, the luckless love 
of a woman, and the love turned to anger of a 
friend. 

Finn: {Putting his hand on her arm.) That is 
enough. A red death is a clean death, and the 



56 Grania 

thing that is done cannot be undone, and the story 
is ended, and there is no other word to say. 

Grania: {Pushing Mm away,) You stood be- 
tween us long enough and he living, but you can- 
not come between us and he dead! And I own 
him from this time any way, and I am glad and 
cotdd nearly laugh, knowing your power is spent 
and run out, and that it will fail you to come 
meddling any more between us that are lovers 
now to the end! 

Finn: Yotir bitter words are no matter. There 
is no one to give heed to them. 

Grania: It is well I will keen him, and I never 
will quit his grave till such time as the one flag- 
stone will cover the two of us from the envious 
eyes of the women of Ireland and from your own. 
And a woman to lose her comrade, she loses with 
him her crown! And let you go to some other 
place, Finn, for you have nothing to say to him 
at all, and no other hand will be laid on him 
from this out but my own ! 

Finn: {Bending over him,) He is not dead — 
his lips are stirring — there is a little blush in his 
face 

Grania: {Stooping.) Oh, Diarmuid, are you 
come back to me? {He moves.) Speak to me 
now. Lift now your lips to my own — ^hush ! He 
is going to speak. Oh, Diarmuid, my darling, 
give me one word! 



Grania 57 

Diarmuid: (Turns his head slightly and looks 
at Finn.) Is that you, my master, Fimi? 
I did not know you were dead along with 
me. 

Grania: You are not dead, you are living — my 
arms are about you. This is my kiss upon your 
cheek. (Kisses him.) 

Diarmuid: (Not noticing her.) The King of 
Foreign is dead. I struck him down by the sally 
tree — as he was falling he struck at me, and the 
life went out of me. But what way did you meet 
with your death, my master Finn ? 

Grania: You are living I say — turn towards 
me. I am Grania, yoiu* wife. 

Diarmuid: (Still speaking to Finn.) It is a 
very friendly thing you to have met me here, and 
it is Ireland and the world should be lonesome 
after you this day ! 

Grania: Speak to him, Finn. Tell him he is 
astray. Tell him he is living. Bring the wits 
back to him. 

Finn: Diarmuid, you are not dead, you are in 
the living world. 

Grania: Come back, now, come back to life! 
Finn thought he had sent you to your death, but 
it failed him — he is treacherous — he is no friend 
to you. You will know that now. Come back, 
and leave thinking of him! 

Diarmuid: (Still speaking to Finn.) There 



58 Grania 

was some word I had to say meeting you — ^it is 
gone — I had it in my mind a while ago. 

Grania: Do you not see me? It is I myself 
am here — Grania! 

Diarmuid: Some wrong I did you, some thing 
past forgiving. Is it to forgive me you are wait- 
ing here for me, and to tell me you are keeping no 
anger against me after all? 

Finn: Come back now, and put out your 
strength, and take a good grip of life, and I will 
give you full forgiveness for all you have done 
against me. And I will have done with anger, 
and with jealousy that has been my bedfellow 
this long time, and I will meddle with you no 
more, unless in the way of kindness. 

Diarmuid: Kindness — ^you were always kind 
surely, and I a little lad at your knee. Who at all 
would be kind to me and you not being kind? 

Finn: I will turn back altogether, I will leave 
you Grania your wife, and all that might come 
between us from this time. 

Diarmuid: What could there be would come 
between us two? That would be a strange thing 
indeed. , 

Finn: I will go, for the madness is as if gone 
from me; and you are my son and my darling, 
and it is beyond the power of any woman to put 
us asunder, or to turn you against me any more. 

Diarmuid: That would be a very foolish man 



Grania 59 

would give up his dear master and his friend for 
any woman at all. {He laughs.) 

Grania: He is laughing — the sense is maybe 
coming back to him. 

Diarmuid: It would be a very foolish thing, any 
woman at all to have leave to come between 
yoiu-self and myvSelf. I cannot but laugh at that. 

Finn: Rouse yourself up now, and show kind- 
ness to the wife that is there at your side. 

Diarmuid: There is some noise of the stream 
where I died. It is in my ears yet — but I remem- 
ber — I am remembering now — there was some- 
thing I begrudged you, the time our bodies were 
heavy about us. Something I brought away 
from you, and kept from you. What wildness 
came upon me to make me begrudge it? What 
was it I brought away from you? Was not Hazel 
my own hound? {He dies.) 

Finn: Lift up your head, open your eyes, do not 
die from me ! Come back to me, Diarmuid, now ! 

Grania: He will say no word to either one of 
us again for ever. {She goes to wall, leaning her 
head against it, her hands working.) 

Finn: Are you gone indeed, Diarmuid, that 
I myself sent to your death? And I would be 
well pleased it was I, Finn, was this day making 
clay, and you yourself holding up your head 
among the armies. It is a bad story for me you 
to be dead, and it is in your place I would be 



6o Grania 

well satisfied to be this day; and you had not 
lived out your time. But as to me, I am tired 
of all around me, and all the weight of the years is 
come upon me, and there will be no more joy in 
anything happens from this day out forever. 
And it is as if all the friends ever I had went to 
nothing, losing you. {After a moment's silence 
he turns to the young men.) Bring him out now, 
slaves of Britain, to his comrades and his friends, 
and the armies that are gathering outside, till 
they will wake him and mourn him and give him 
burial, for it is a king is lost from them this day. 
And if you have no mind to keen him, let you 
raise a keen for the men of your own coimtry he 
left dumb in the dust, and a foolish smile on their 
face. For he was a good man to put down his 
enemies and the enemies of Ireland, and it is Hving 
he would be this day if it was not for his great 
comeliness and the way he had, that sent every 
woman stammering after him and coveting him; 
and it was love of a woman brought him down in 
the end, and sent him astray in the world. And 
what at all is love, but lies on the lips and dnmk- 
enness, and a bad companion on the road? 

( The body is carried out. The hearers begin to 
keen. The keen is taken up by the armies 
outside. Finn sits down, his head bowed 
in his hand. Grania begins fastening up 
her hair and as if preparing for a journey. 



Grania 6i 

Finn: You are doing well going out to 
keen after him. 

Grania: It is not with him I am going. 
It is not with Diarmuid I am going out. It is 
an empty thing to be crying the loss of a 
comrade that banished me from his thoughts, for 
the sake of any friend at all. It is with you I 
will go to Almhuin. Diarmuid is no more to me 
than a sod that has been quenched with the rain. 

Finn: I will meddle no more with what 
belongs to him. You are the dead man's wife. 

Grania: All the wide earth to come between 
Diarmuid and myself, it would put us no farther 
away from one another than what we are. And 
as for the love I had for him, it is dead now, 
and turned to be as cold as the snow is out 
beyond the path of the sun. 

Finn: It is the trouble of the day that is 
preying on you. 

Grania: He had no love for me at any time. 
It is easy know it now. I knew it all the while, 
but I would not give in to believe it. His de- 
sire was all the time with you yourself and 
Almhuin. He let on to be taken up with me, 
and it was but letting on. Why would I fret 
after him that so soon forgot his wife, and left 
her in a wretched way? 

Finn: You are not judging him right. You 
are distracted with the weight of your loss. 



62 Grania 

Grania: Does any man at all speak lies at 
the very brink of death, or hold any secret in 
his heart? It was at that time he had done 
with deceit, and he showed where his thought 
was, and had no word at all for me that had 
left the whole world for his sake, and that went 
wearing out my youth, pushing here and there 
as far as the course of the stars of Heaven. 
And my thousand curses upon death not to 
have taken him at daybreak, and I believing his 
words! It is then I would have waked him 
well, and would have cried my seven generations 
after him! And I have lost all on this side of 
the world, losing that trust and faith I had, and 
finding him to think of me no more than of a 
fiock of stairs would cast their shadow on his 
path. And I to die with this scald upon my 
heart, it is hard thistles would spring up out 
of my grave. 

Finn: Quiet yourself, for this is grief gone 
wild and that is beyond all measure. 

Grania: I to have known that much yesterday 
I would have left him and would have gone with 
that King that clutched at me. And I would 
have said words to Diarmuid would have left a 
bum and a sting. 

Finn: I will call in women to cry with you 
and to be comforting you. 

Grania: You are craving to get rid of me 



Grania 63 

now, and to put me away out of your thoughts, 
the same as Diarmuid did. But I will not 
go! I will hold you to your word, I will take 
my revenge on him! He will think to keep 
your mind filled with himself and to keep me 
from you, — he will be coming back showing him- 
self as a ghost about Almhuin. He will think 
to come whispering to you, and you alone in 
the night time. But he will find me there before 
him! He will shrink away lonesome and bafiled! 
I will have my ttim that time. It is I will 
be between him and yourself, and will keep 
him outside of that lodging for ever! 

Finn: I gave him my promise I would leave 
you to him from this out, and I will keep 
it to him dead, the same as if he was still living. 

Grania: How well he kept his own promise to 
you! I will go to Almhuin in spite of you; 
you will be ashamed to turn me back in the, 
sight of the people, and they having seen your 
feet grown hard in following and chasing me 
through the years. It is women are said to 
change, and they do not, but it is men that change 
and turn as often as the wheel of the moon. 
You filled all Ireland with your outcry want- 
ing me, and now, when I am come into yoiu* 
hand, your love is rusted and worn out. It 
is a pity I that had two men, and three men, 
killing one another for me an hoiu- ago, to be 



64 Grania 

left as I am, and no one having any use for me 
at all! 

Finn: It is the hardness of trouble is about 
my heart, and is bringing me down with its 
weight. And it seems to me to be left alone with 
December and the bareness of the boughs; 
and the fret will be on me to the end. 

Grania: Is it not a strange thing, you, that 
saw the scores and the himdreds stretched dead, 
that at the sight of one yoimg man only, you 
give in to the drowning of age. It is little 
I will give heed from this out to words or to 
coaxings, and I have no love to give to any man 
for ever. But Diarmuid that belittled me will 
not see me beating my hands beside his grave, 
showing off to the cranes in the willows, and 
twisting a mournful cry. It is the thing I 
will give him to take notice of, a woman that 
cared nothing at all for his treachery. 

Finn: Wait till the months of mourning are 
at an end, and till yotu* big passion is cold, and do 
then what you may think fit, and settle out 
yotir life, as it is likely there will be another 
thought in your mind that time. But I am 
putting no reproach on you, for it is on my- 
self the great blame should be, and from this 
out I have no more to say to love or friend- 
ship or anything but the hard business of the 
day. 



Grania 65 

Grania: I will not wait. I will give my 
thoughts no leave to repent. I will give no 
time to those two slaves to tell out the way I 
was scorned! 

Finn: The men of the armies will laugh and 
mock at you, seeing you settle out a new wed- 
ding in the shadow of your comrade's wake. 

Grania: There is many a woman lost her lord, 
and took another, and won great praise in the latter 
end, and great honour. And why should I be 
always a widow that went so long a maid? Give 
me now the crown, till I go out before them, as 
you offered it often enough. {She puts it on her 
head.) I am going, I am going out now, to show 
myself before them all, and my hand linked in 
your own. It is well I brought my golden dress. 

Finn: Wait till the darkness of the night, or 
the dusk of the evening itself. 

Grania: No, no. Diarmuid might not see me at 
that time. He might be gone to some other place. 
He is surely here now, in this room where he parted 
from the body — he is lingering there by the hearth. 
Let him see now what I am doing, and that there 
is no fear on me, or no wavering of the mind. Open 
the door now for me ! 

{Finn opens door and they go to the openings 
she taking his hand. There is a mock- 
ing laugh heard. She falls hack and 
crouches down. Finn tries to raise her.) 
5 



66 Grania 

Finn: I thought to leave you and to go from 
you, and I cannot do it. For we three have been 
these seven years as if alone in .the world; and 
it was the cruelty and the malice of love made 
its sport with us, when we thought it was our 
own way we were taking, driving us here and 
there, knocking you in between us, like the ball 
between two goals, and the hurlers being out of 
sight and beyond the boundaries of the world. 
And all the three of us have been as if worsted 
in that play. And now there are but the two 
of us left, and whether we love or hate one an- 
other, it is certain I can never feel love or hatred 
for any other woman from this out, or you your- 
self for any other man. And so as to yourself and 
myself, Grania, we must battle it out to the end. 
{Finn raises her up. A louder peal oj 
laughter is heard.) 

Grania: {Going towards the door,) It is but 
the armies that are laughing! I thought I heard 
Diarmuid's laugh. 

Finn: It is his friends in the armies gave 
out that mocking laugh. 

Grania: And is it not a poor thing, strong 
men of the sort to be mocking at a woman 
has gone through sharp anguish, and the break- 
ing of love, on this day? Open the door again 
for me. I am no way daunted or afraid. Let | 
them laugh their fill and welcome, and laugh 



Grania 67 

you, Finn, along with them if you have a mind. 
And what way would it serve me, their praise 
and their affection to be mine? For there is not 
since an hour ago any sound would matter at 
all, or be more to me than the squeaking of bats 
in the rafters, or the screaming of wild geese 
overhead ! 

{She opens the door herself. Finn puts his 
arm about her. There is another great 
peal of laughter y but it stops suddenly 
as she goes out.) 

Curtain 



KINCORA 



Copyright, 190S, by Lady Gregory. 
69 



Persons 
Malachi . . . high king of Ireland 
Maelmora . king of leinster, brother to 

GORMLEITH 

Brennain .... .Brian's servant 

Rury malachi' s servant 

Phelan . . . . maelmora' s servant 
Brian . . king of munster, afterwards 

HIGH KING 

Murrough his son 

Gormleith . his wife, formerly malachi's 

WIFE 

Sitric . . HER son by olaf of the danes 
A Beggar Girl J 

1 



70 



Act I 

Scene: A room in Brian's palace at Kincora, 
Malachi and Maelmora at a table. 

Malachi: Brian may be a great man, Mael- 
mora, and he may have earned a great name. 
But he had n*t a stim of sense, no more than 
I myself, when it came to the choosing of a 
wife. 

Maelmora: Let you keep in mind now when 
you speak of Brian's wife, it is of my own 
sister you are speaking. 

Malachi: It is hard to keep that in mind 
and very hard. It is as if something went cross- 
ways in the making of the two of you, the way 
you turned out peaceable, and she that is a woman 
to be giddy and full of stir. I give you my 
word you would have as much ease being in 
the one house with her, as to be lodging in a 
nest of wild bees. 

Maelmora: You took her on the wrong side 
always, crossing and criticising her, and torment- 
ing her to attend to the needle and to the 

71 



^2 Kincora 

business of the house. Brian will make a better 
hand of his marriage, letting her go her own way, 
and believing as he does there are not her three 
equals in the world wide. 

Malachi: I gave her a good house and good 
means and a good name the day I made her the 
High King's wife. Was not that enough to sat- 
isfy any woman within the ring of Ireland? And 
when she turned her hand to meddling with my 
own business, and with things she had no call to 
at all, I said good-morrow to her and made a 
good provision for her; and the Pope of Rome 
gave her, or did not give her, leave to go suit 
herself better in a man. 

Maelmora: She is getting a good man, getting 
Brian. 

Malachi: That it may come happy! I had 
enough of that tongue of hers that has the grey 
scrape of the Spring. I did not begrudge her 
to Brian the time she came to him, herself, her 
coach, and her bridesmaids. It is well if we 
get through the business that brought us here 
without her. Brian is a hard man, and very 
hard, at making his own bargain, without having 
her at his back. 

Maelmora: It would be more answerable to 
us getting time to see our own advisers at 
home. What chance have we against him, and 
Jie in his own place at Kincora? 



Kincora 73 

Malachi: What chance had we against him 
since the time he brought his fleet of boats up 
the Shannon? You know well he threatened 
myself in my own strong place in Meath. It 
is little chance you yourself had, the time he 
went following you into Leinster. It is well for 
you he joined with your sister, or you would 
have been swept before this. 

Maelmora: Hard as they are, he said he would 
not move from these terms. But it is likely 
he might come around to give in a little here 
or there. 

Malachi: Every man has a right to do that, 
and not to push things too far. It would 
be a queer rope that would not be slackened 
at one time or another. 

Maelmora: He lays down that I myself must 
be imder him, outside such things as concern 
my own district, and make no league or bargain 
on my account with any king in or outside of Ire- 
land. But I have made out a new agreement here. 
Let him leave me to go my own way until there 
will be some time of need, and then I will come 
of my free will, and bring all the choice men of 
Leinster to his help. 

Malachi: He wrote in my own agreement that 
he must have entire authority in Mimster and 
in the whole of the South. He goes so far as 
to say he can call for judgments to be given here 



74 Kincora 

in his own place. I now am not inclined to give 
in to that. So long as I am High King, I must 
have every law and every decree given out in 
Tara. 

Maelmora: He is entirely too hard on Sitric. 
If he is head of the Danes itself, he is my 
own sister's son, and I must see that he will 
get fair play. His people should get better treat- 
ment, and not be set labouring in the fields and 
dragging the same as four-footed beasts. 

{Brennain, Rury, and Phelan come in. 
Brennain pulls forward Ms master's 
chair. Brian comes in and sits down.) 

Malachi: I myself and the King of Leinster are 
ready for you now, Brian. 

Brian: Is Sitric here, or is there any sign of 
him coming? 

Maelmora: He cannot be far off. There was 
news he will be here within the hoiu*. 

Brian: But you yourselves have put your 
names to the agreements we made out. Give 
me yours here, Maelmora. 

Maelmora: 1 did not put my name to it yet.. 
I made some changes. I was thinking you are 
too hard on me in this. 

Brian: You did not think that way the time 
my army was visiting you in Leinster. Yotu- 
memory is gone from you in its track. You came 
asking and calling to me to quit your province, 



Kincora 75 

saying you would give in to anjrthing I might 
lay down. No, there is no cause for that flush 
on your face. It was only some little forgetful- 
ness. We could find a ciu-e for it quick enough, 
if I should come again upon the plains of Kildare. 

Maelmora: Give it here, I will put my name 
to what you wrote. {Signs.) 

Brian: And what about Sitric? You will re- 
member you went bail for him? 

Maelmora: If I did I will hold to it. What 
have we to do? It is you yotuself have the 
power. It is as well to be imder you, and to 
get yoiu" protection for otuselves. 

Brian: You see how the High King is not 
slow or imwilling putting his name to his own 
agreement. No, he has not written it. Brennain, 
go seek a better pen for the High King's use. It 
is the pen that has failed, and not his own word. 
Malachi is like myself, he always holds to his 
word. 

Malachi: {Signing.) Well, Brian, you are a 
hard man. But you are doing what I suppose I 
myself might be doing, and I being in your place. 
I soimded the pipes yesterday, you are soimding 
them to-day. There, you have an equal share 
of Ireland with myself. 

Brian: That is right now. Yourself and my- 
self between us can sweep the whole coimtry, 
and turn it all to peace. 



76 Kincora 

Malachi: You are a terrible wicked man, 
Brian, to go out fighting with for peace. 

Brian: It is nothing less than that I have been 
fighting for, through the most of my lifetime, up 
to now. 

Maelmora: I cannot make out at all why so 
hardy and so dreaded a man should have his 
mind set on doing away with war. 

Brian: It is because I have had my fill of 
it. Through all the generations my race was 
for fighting, my father, and my old father, and all 
that went before. Lugaidh son of Aengus, Cathal 
son of Aedh, Core son of Anluan, Lorcan son 
of Lochta, Cennedigh son of Lorcan; there was 
no one of them all was reared to any other trade. 
What way did I myself pass my early time? 
Watching and attacking, through long winter 
nights and long summer days, striving to drive 
out altogether the enemies of Ireland and of 
Mimster. It is well I have earned the right by 
this to ttmi from wicked to kind. 

Malachi: If there is any man at all can turn 
peaceable and keep his name up, it is your- 
self should be able to do it, for there is no one 
can say it was through any slackness you are 
doing it, or any fear, for that is a thing never came 
into the one house with you. 

Brian: In troth it is a scarce thing among us. 
To go into danger shouting, the feet as if rising 



Kincora 



77 



off the ground with the stir put in them by 
the pipes, the heart airy in the same way, there is 
no common man of our armies but will feel that 
much, the time the troops of his enemies are com- 
ing at him, with their attacks and with their 
cries. 

Malachi: That is an easy coiirage enough. It 
is a harder thing to hold to what is won, and to 
keep out meddlers, and to force respect for the 
law. To work that out, and to sweat it out, 
watching and foreseeing through the day, the 
heart starting and uneasy in the night time, that 
is a heavy load for any man to be carrying through 
the weeks and the months and the years. 

Brian: There is no one in this country hardy 
enough to face it out but the two, or maybe 
the three, of us in this room. And as to myself, 
it is long ago I might have run from it, but for 
respect for the Man that laid the charge on me, 
that is God. 

Malachi: It is often I thought there was a 
good saint spoiled in you, Brian, and you taking 
to the straight sword and not to the Bishop's 
crook. 

Mur rough: It might have been better for 
yotuself , Malachi, if my father had never meddled 
with a sword. 

Malachi: Hearken to the crowing of the young 
cx)ck! We are done with all that now, Mturough. 



78 Kincora 

The sparrows are nesting to-day that were scold- 
ing at one another yesterday. 

Brian: {Getting up and looking out.) It is a 
pity Sitric is not come to make an entire end 
of this business. 

Maelmora: I tell you I am answerable for my 
nephew Sitric. He is giving in altogether. 

Malachi: He had nothing to do but to give 
in, the time you took away the help of Leinster 
from him. 

Maelmora: I will go out by the Hill of the 
Grey Rock to meet him. It is likely he may be 
coming by Lough Graney. I promised him a 
good welcome from you, Brian. 

Brian: You did well promising that. Go you, 
Murrough, with Maelmora. I myself will go 
towards the weir. He might chance to come 
from the south. 

Malachi: I will go along with you, Brian. 
We can be pricing the colts in the river meadows 
as we go. 

Brian: {To Brennain.) Make the table ready, 
Brennain. When Sitric comes all we have to do is 
to see his name put to the agreement, and to sit 
down to dinner. 

{The Kings all go out. The servants come 
forward.) 

Phelan: This peace is a great celebration now 
of Brian's wedding with Queen Gormleith. Ma- 



Kincora 79 

lachi the High King owning the whole of the 
North. Brian King of the whole of the South! 
Maelmora safe in his own place in Leinster. 
Meddling with one another no more than the 
white and the yolk of an egg! Peace as round 
and as sound as the eggshell itself. Peace for- 
ever in Ireland and Leinster and in Kincora ! 

Brennain: Ah, what signifies talking about eggs 
and about agreements? The one is as perishable 
as the other. Believe me there is some mother 
of mischief does be always at roost overhead in 
Ireland, to claw and to shatter pacifications or any 
well disposed thing at all. Peaces and treaties ! I 
would make no treaty with the Gall but to 
strike their head off! 

Phelan: You are always ready, Brennain, to 
put ridicule upon anything I will lay down. But 
I know well, whatever may have happened at any 
other time, this peace will never be broken. Who 
is there to frustrate it? It is not the Danes will 
do that and they being the way they are, not 
daring to let a squeal out of them, no more 
than a hunted otter would have gone hiding in 
a stream. 

Rury: Whoever may break that peace it will 
not be my master Malachi. Too wide he is and 
too fleshy, and too easy, to be craving more of 
the cares and the hardships of the world. It is 
quiet he is asking now, to get some comfort and 



8o Kincora 

to train his four-year-olds, and to be sleeping his 
sound sleep through the night time. 

Phelan: Whoever might break the peace it will 
not be my own master Maelmora. Now that the 
Danes are beat, he has no mind to be beat 
along with them, and in my opinion he is 
right. 

Brennain: There is no one but must say that 
Brian has done his best for peace, and he going 
so far as to bring home a wife, as a notice and as 
a sign that the country should be tranqmllised. 
It is not out of Kincora that any provocation 
will be rising up. Sure our teeth are clogged yet 
with the leavings of the wedding feast. 

Rury: There is no chance I suppose, my hero, 
that the newly married Queen might bring the 
pot to the boil? 

Brennain: Ah, not at all ! What call would she 
have to be meddling in things of the sort? A very 
pleasant plain lady, kind and nice and lucky; it 's 
as easy talk to her as a child. 

Phelan: I was wondering not to see her to-day 
and the kings having that big ^^^ork in hand. 
That is not the way she used to be in her early 
time in Leinster. 

Brennain: Spearing eels she went, up in the 
shallows of the river. A good housekeeper she is. 
She is not one would take her ease and leave the 
Friday without provision. And there are many 



Kincora 8i 

not having as much as her, would n't walk the 
road with pride. 

Rury: You are a very clever man surely Bren- 
nain and a good judge of the Queens of the world 
and their ways. 

Brennain: Siu-e we had a Queen in it previ- 
ously. Murrough's mother that was a girl of the 
Hynes out of Connacht. A very nice biddable 
woman, rocking the cradle with Murrough, and 
thanking God for her own good luck through the 
Sundays and holidays of the year. And what 
Brian got at the first offer, it is not likely it will 
fail him secondly, and he being high up in the 
world, and getting sense and experience through 
up to near three-score years. 

Phelan: Stop your mouth now. Here she is 
herself coming up the path from the river side. 
Stepping on the tops of the grass she is, as if she 
never felt the weight of her crosses; and she a 
widow-woman before Malachi joined with her 
itself. 

{Gormleith comes to threshold and stands look- 
ing in. All the servants fall back and 
how obsequiously.) 

Brennain: A welcome before you, Queen, and 
that you may keep your luck ever and always; 
and what you have not to-day, that you may 
have ten times more this day twenty years! 

Gormleith: {Giving him her eel-spear and net.) 



82 Kincora 

Who are these that are come to the house? Is 
that not Phelan of the King of Leinster's peo- 
ple? You are Rury, King Malachi's serving man. 
But the High King is not here yet? 

Rury: The High King is here these three hours, 
Queen; he took notice of you in the boat, and you 
going up the river. 

Gormleith: It is likely he is taking some rest, 
according to his custom. 

Rury: He is not, Queen, but he is after doing 
the business he had taken in hand. 

Gormleith: {Coming to Maelmora*s chair, putting 
her hand on the hack of it.) What put that hurry 
on him? He used not to be so eager, but 
slack. 

Rury: Troth he made no delay this time, but 
sent word to Brian it was best to make a start 
and to finish the work out of face. Himself and 
Maelmora sat down after that, and never quitted 
arguing and soimding out the writings they had 
put down, till such time as they had their agree- 
ment made out with Brian. 

Gormleith: {To Phelan.) Did my brother agree 
to this new bargain? 11 

Phelan: He did agree where he had to agree to 
it, and Malachi that had him led to make a stand 
against Brian, giving in and agreeing on his own 
side. 

Gormleith: He had a right to have come to 



Kincora 83 

me for advice. Maelmora is as simple and as 
imiocent as a child. 

Phelan: It is a pity indeed he to have joined 
in with Malachi at all. 

Gormleith: What now has Malachi himself got 
out of this? Did the High Kingship slip from him 
yet? 

Rury: Malachi is High King now and always, 
and with the help of God he will be King in Tara 
to the end. 

Gormleith: What part have the Danes now in 
the new agreement ? Is Si trie given any share in 
the country ? 

Phelan: Sitric is to be forced to quit the coim- 
try before the quarter, and his troop of Danes 
along with him, or to be imder the jurisdiction 
of Malachi and of Brian. 

Gormleith: I was never told that. Did Sitric 
agree to be banished, or to take orders from 
Malachi? 

Phelan: It is what I heard them saying, he will 
give in to stop here imder orders. Maelmora, that 
went security, said he would write his name to 
that treaty of pacification, between this and the 
fall of night. 

Gormleith: They did not forewarn me he was 
coming. I thought the business would not be 
pressed on in this way. 

Phelan: It is for himself they are waiting at 



84 Kincora 

this time. They are gone out to hurry him, and 
they are right doing that. He to make any more 
delay, it will not be answerable to the dinner. 

Gormleiih: They will be wanting their dinner 
after such great work. I am greatly in your way, 
Brennain. You had best make ready the tables. 

Brennain: All is ready and waiting, Queen. 
We have but to set the chairs, and to bring in 
the dishes that are dressed. 

Gormleith: I do not see you stirring yourself, 
Rury. Is there no help you can give? 

Rury: I can be putting the chair ready for the 
High King. {Pulls a chair forward.) 

Gormleiih: Do not put that chair for him, that 
is King Brian's chair. 

Rury: It is the custom to give the best chair 
to the High King of Ireland. 

Gormleith: It was the custom. But remember 
the High King is not above King Brian now. 
He is but his equal. They are the Kings of the 
North and the South. 

Rury: I wotdd never give in to put Malachi 
below any other man at all. 

Phelan: Where can I put the King of Leinster's 
chair? 

Brennain: Put it there — by Malachi*s left 
hand. That is it. A little farther down. 

Gormleith: You are putting it too close, Phelan. 
King Malachi is so high over all, there must 



Kincora 85 

be the length of a sword left between him and 
any other King of a Province. 

Phelan: My master is good enough to sit close 
up to any one of the kings of the world. 

Gormleith: {To Rury.) You should put these 
forgetful men in mind that your master is master 
over them. 

Rury: So he is, so he is! It is Tara is the 
capital of Ireland. 

Brennain: It is not, but Elincora that is the 
capital. 

Phelan: {At window.) There is Sitric coming; 
himself and the King of Leinster are on the brow 
of the hill. 

Brennain: It is best for us to be putting the 
meat on the table so. {Goes to the door, and 
brings hack dishes one by one from outside.) 
Sitric will sign his name with the less delay 
the time he will see the fat of the mutton 
hardening. 

Gormleith: {Who has gone to the window, turn- 
ing from it.) They are a long way off. I will 
go meet them. You have time enough. I will 
leave you an advice. Be sure that the best dish 
is set before the greatest of the Kings. {Goes out.) 

Brennain: Here is the best dish, the salted 
roimd of the beef. I will set it here before King 
Brian. 

Rury: It is before Malachi it has a right to 



86 Kincora 

be put. The best dish should be put before the 
High King. 

Brennain: You heard what Queen Gorm- 
leith is after saying, that Brian is every bit as 
good now as Malachi. 

Rury: He is not as good as the King of Tara; 
and he never will be as good. Put the beef here. 

Brennain: Here is a dish is as good, a roasted 
quarter of a boar. 

Rury: We have plenty of pigs in the North. 
A pig is no great dish for a Eling. The beef is 
the more honourable dish. 

Brennain: If it is, it is to the more honourable 
man it is going. 

Rury: How do you make that out? The High 
King is the most honourable man. 

Brennain: The High King is it? Where would 
he be this day but for Brian? 

Rury: What is that you are saying? 

Brennain: I tell you if it was not for Brian 
taking the Danes in hand the way he did, it 
is hares of the wilderness Malachi might be 
looking for milk from to-morrow morning, instead 
of from cows! 

Rury: Brian is it? Where was Brian the day 
Malachi took the golden collar from the big 
Dane? Answer me that! 

Brennain: That Malachi may be choked 
with that same collar before the size of my 



Kincora 87 

nail of this beef will go down his gullet until 
he has asked it first of Brian! 

Rury: Asked it of Brian! 

Brennain: Asked it and begged it, the same 
as a queen's lapdog begs at the table. 

Phelan: And what share of the meat is the 
King of Leinster to get? It is another roimd 
of the beef should be put before him! 

Brennain: The next time the King of Leinster 
comes here he will find his fill of beef before him — 
his own cattle that will be coming from now to 
then, as tribute from the traitors of Leinster! 

Phelan: Holy Saint Brigit! Listen to what 
they are saying of your own province! 

Rury: Brennain is right that time. Tripe and 
cow-heels and pigs' crubeens are good enough for 
that troop, and too good! 

Phelan: Oh, let me out of this! Tripe and 
crubeens, and all that plenty in the house. I will 
call upon all the poets of Leinster to put the curse 
of scarcity on Kincora! 

Brennain: My grief I have not the time to 
sharpen this knife. No matter. It is on your 
own bones I will sharpen it. {All seize knives 
and threaten each other, Maelmoray Murroughy 
Sitric, and Gormleith come in,) 

Murrough: Have the dogs been let loose from 
the kennels? Brennain, what is the meaning of 
these noises? 



88 Kincora 

Brennain: It is those ones that made an 
attack on me. For qmet I myself am, and 
for getting ready the table. 

Phelan: Taking the best of the beef he was, 
and leaving my master to the culls. 

Brennain: It was Rury that was asking the 
best of the chairs for Malachi. 

Rury: Let you keep your chair so! Malachi 
will be master in whatever chair he may sit. 

Murrough: Malachi master here! That is a 
new thing for us to know. 

Phelan: Some say he is uppermost, and some 
say Brian, but the King of Leinster is put in 
the lowest place of all. 

Maelmora: {To Murrough.) Am I thought to 
be so greatly below Brian, on the head of 
agreeing to a settlement with him? 

Murrough: You agreed to pay rent for your 
province. It is not the one is uppermost that 
sends in a rent. 

Maelmora: If Brian had spoken in that way 
I would not have given in to send it. I have a 
mind to keep it back even now. 

Murrough: If we send our men looking for 
it, there will be maybe more profit with us than 
with yourself. 

Maelmora: I am well able to hold my province 
against the men of Kincora. Let them fish 
and shiver like cranes in moonlight, before they 



Kincora 89 

will see so much as one staggering bullock 
coming from Leinster. 

Sitric: {To Maelmora.) You made out it 
was for peacemaking you brought me here. It 
seems to me more like the making of a battle. 

Gormleith: If that is so, it might happen as 
lucky. You are in yoiu: early days, it might 
chance you to make a better fight for yourself. 

Sitric: It is a great pity I came to Kincora 
without bringing a good back of my own men. 

Murrough: If you had come bringing yoiu- 
fleet of Danes, it is likely you might have got a 
welcome would have kept you here until the 
brink of Judgment! 

Sitric: It would have been right to have smoked 
out this den in the winter nights that are past. 

Murrough: That smoke would have brought 
us out to do what was done on you at Sulcoit. 

Gormleith: {To Maelmora.) It was yoiu: ad- 
vice that brought Sitric here. Are you satisfied he 
is getting good treatment and a friend's welcome? 

Maelmora: Keep your tongue quiet, Murrough. 
It is hardly Sitric will bear from you, what he 
might bear from Brian. 

Sitric: I will take no scolding salute from 
Brian or from any other man, whatever you 
yourself may be in the habit of taking. 

Maelmora: I have no such habit. I will not 
let any man say that. 



90 Kincora 

Sitric: You have taken his orders, you are 
dragging me into his service the same as yourself. 

Maelmora: If I joined in his league it might 
happen to me to break away from it yet. It 
might be less troublesome after, even if it should 
bring me to my death. 

Murrough: There is many a man met with a 
woeful death through setting himself up against 
King Brian. 

Brennain: That is good talk, Mtirrough! It 
is Brian has the sway in every place! It is 
Murrough, my darling, and Brian, are the two 
hawks of battle of the Gael! 

Phelan: It is myself and Maelmora will turn 
you to jackdaws! It is ourselves will change yoiu* 
note for you ! 

Rury: Malachi and the Hill of Tara! 

Brennain: Kincora and the River Shannon! 

Phelan: No rent to Brian! We *11 hold the 
cattle ! 

Rury: Hi for Tara! 

Brennain: Out with the Meath graziers! 

Phelan: Down with Kincora! 

Brennain: No, but down with Leinster! 
{Murrough, Sitric, and Maelmora are striking at 
one another with their swords.) 

Rury: The ICings! {Murrough, Maelmora, and 
Sitric draw hack as Brian and Malachi come in. 
The servants Jail back.) 



Kincora 91 

Brian: {Sternly.) Miurough, what ails you? 
Are these mannerly ways? 

Murrough: {Suddenly taking hand from sword!) 
It is you they were faulting, and Kincora. 
They gregged me with their threats and their 
jibes. They said they were as great as you. 
They said — I forget now what they said. 

Brian: Shut your ears, Murrough, to stiff words 
said under yoiu* own roof. It is best not to hear 
what you have no leave to answer. {To Sitric and 
Malachi.) I ask yotir pardon — I am sorry such 
a thing has happened. 

{He goes aside with them. Malachi and 
Gormleith meet.) 

Malachi: {To Gormleith.) I got no chance 
before this to salute the Queen of Munster. 

Gormleith: She is very thankful to King Malachi 
for the Godspeed that was said to her in Tara. 

Malachi: It would seem that you have foimd 
in Kincora the stir it failed you to find in my 
own house. 

Gormleith: It is likely I would have foimd 
stir if I had stopped with you for another while, 
and yourself and myself facing one another on 
the hearthside, through the dark evenings of the 
year. 

Malachi: It would be no wonder, in my 
opinion, if the Queen herself had put the kindling 
to this crackling wisp? 



92 Kincora 

Gormleith: I wotild not put a lie on the High 

King, whatever opinion he might be giving out. 

Malachi: Mind now, Queen, what I am going 
to say. I am not joking or ftmning. You are 
come into a good man's house. Give heed to your 
flighty headstrong ways, or it may happen you 
some day to put kindHng to no less a thing than 
the roof that gave shelter to you. 

Brian: {Coming over to them,) I am sorry, 
Queen, you have seen such disorder in this place, 
and you being in it so short a while. You 
will bring order into it now. I had to straighten 
out my own home, or it would fail me to shape 
the whole country to the one pattern. A house 
without a good woman over it is no better than 
a busy hillside, where men are shouting, and 
hounds are snapping at their prey, and mannerly 
ways are out of mind. 

Gormleith: Indeed I have no complaint to make 
of all that I have found before me. 

Brian: It is seldom a woman's voice was 
heard here through the years past, imless it 
might be in the keening, when the dead of our 
race are brought home. 

Gormleith: It is no sleepy place I am come to, 
or a place where slackness would be in fashion. 
I am satisfied and well satisfied with the roof 
that has given me shelter. 

Malachi: Let us not be wasting time now. 



Kincora 93 

and the day going. Sitric is here with us. Let 
him put his name to the agreement, and the dinner 
will turn the whole company to better himiour. 
Good meat and good drink are maybe the best 
peacemakers. 

Brian: There is the agreement, Sitric. Mael- 
mora, your uncle, put down the terms you had 
settled between you. You have but to put your 
name. The securities will be written with it 
to-morrow. {Sitric is silent,) Will you cast an 
eye on it? Or are you satisfied with whatever 
Maelmora has written? 

Malachi: We put down in the writing that 
you and your army would agree to quit Ireland 
or to live in quiet, without arms, in the service of 
myself and of Brian. 

Sitric: I will not write my name to it. 

Brian: You came here promising to do it. 

Malachi: It was of your own free will you 
sent in your submission. Why would you draw 
back from it now?. 

Sitric: Words have been said to me that I am 
not used to put up with. 

Brian: This is Murrough's foolishness. I have 
asked your pardon for it, and he will ask your 
pardon. 

Sitric: I will not agree to obey or give in to 
any one of you at all. 

Malachi: What is that you are saying? 



94 Kincora 

Sitric: I will not give in to yourself or to 
Brian. I will not give in to be a stranger and 
an exile. I will not bid my people to give up 
their arms. I will bid them to go on fighting 
to the last. 

Brian: You know well you cotdd not stand 
against us alone, through the length of a winter 
day. 

Maelmora: He will not be alone. I give up 
my share in this league. I would sooner be 
with the Danes, than imder Brian of the Tributes. 

Malachi: How quick you yoimgsters are at 
taking offence! A couple of foolish words said, 
and all oiu- trouble gone to loss. When you are 
as long on the road as we are you will take things 
easy. In my opinion Brian was too soft with the 
two of you up to this. It would have been better 
to have banished you, and gained some comfort 
for the both of us. {To Brian.) Maybe we 
can make them some offer. Let them have 
their own way with Leinster so long as they will 
not meddle with ourselves. A new war would 
be a weighty business. You were saying awhile 
ago the country was in great need of peace. 

Brian: Entire peace is what is badly wanting, 
but a half peace is no better worth the winning 
than the half of the living child was brought to 
the Judgment of Solomon. 

Malachi: In my opinion you will not see 



Kincora 95 

entire peace or the end of quarrels in Ireland, 
till such time as the grass stops growing or talk 
comes to the thrush. 

Brian: I tell you I will make no settlement 
that will leave any one of the five Provinces a 
breeding ground for the enemies and the ill- 
wishers of Ireland. When Charlemagne of the 
French took his work in hand he left no such a 
nest of mischief; or Harold in Norway, or Alfred 
of the burned cakes, that is in the histories. 
This tossed tormented country has to be put 
in order, and to be kept in order, and travel 
whatever road God laid out for it, without argu- 
ing and backbiting and the quarrelling of cranky 
bigoted men. Sitric must put his name to this 
or make himself ready for a battle and a check. 

Sitric: {Takes parchment, looks at it a moment, 
then cuts it through with his sword and throws it down 
violently.) There is an end of your agreement ! 

Brian: {Taking out sword.) This edge is sharp 
yet. God knows I am telling no lie saying I 
would sooner see it rusted than raddled. 

Malachi: War is a troublesome business. 
There is maybe no one of us will be the 
better of it in the end. 

Brian: { Unbuckling sheath.) But as to this 
cover it may rust and rot, for I will make no 
use of it from this out so long as there is so much 
as a whisper of rebellion or of treachery in any 



96 Kincora 

province or barony or parish, east or west, north 
or south! {Throws it down.) 

Sitric: Let my own stay with it till I come 
to bring it away! {Throws down sheath.) 

Maelmora: And there is mine along with 
it ! {He and Sitric turn to go.) 

Gormleith: {To Malachi.) That is the way we 
strike the board till we see the cards coming to 
us! The trump will be in our hands yet! Are 
you loth, Malachi, to trust your luck to the 
cards? Do not be daunted, Brian is on your side 
this time! But believe me, the world will won- 
der yet, at the luck you let go from you to Brian! 



Curtain 



Act II 

[after glenmama] 

Scene: Same room at Kincora. Heap of spoils 
on floor, Brennain has just come in holding 
Phelan, who is bound. Music outside and 
shouting, Rury is looking at spoils on fl^or, 

Brennain: Those are terrible great shouts the 
people are letting out of them to welcome King 
Brian, that has beat the whole fleet of traitors at 
Glenmama, and has them ground as fine as meal! 

Rury: And to welcome King Malachi that 
beat them along with him, and that will be 
here within the hoiu*. 

Brennain: And maybe to welcome myself! 
What now do you say to me taking this prisoner 
in the battle! Drove him before me I did the 
whole of the way from Glenmama. Believe me 
it 's the Leinster men can nm well ! 

Rury: Is it my brave Phelan is in it, that 
went out such a hero to the war? 
7 97 



98 Kincora 

Brennain: {Pushing Phelan before Mm.) Come 
on here! Is it that you said we were jackdaws? 
Give me a wisp of lighted straw, till I '11 make 
him shout for King Brian! 

Rury: That 's the chat! That 's the chat ! Put 
terror on him now, till he '11 let out a shout for 
the High King! 

Brennain: That 's the way we drag traitors 
back, that went boasting and barging out of 
Kincora. 

Phelan: If I did boast, you need not be putting 
the blame on myself. The dog to get a bone, 
the dog's tail must wag. I do but wag as my 
master pleases. 

Brennain: (Looking at heap of spoils.) It is 
ourselves are nourished with the bone presently! 
Satin stuffs, gold rings, jewels would buy out the 
entire world ! Coming in since morning they are ! 
You would not meet a car or a Christian on 
the road but is charged with them! Robbed by 
the Danes they were from every strong place in 
Ireland and from the hidden houses of the Sidhe ! 

Rury: I am best pleased my own mind to 
be dwelling on the prisoners. Sitric to be taken 
with his army of Danes. The King of Leinster 
to be brought here {turns to Phelan) spancelled in 
a gad, the same as his own serving man. 

Brennain: It was Murrough took him, my 
darling boy! Concealed he was in a yew tree. 



Kincora 99 

It was Mmrough dragged him out of it, the 
same as a wren's nest. 

Phelan: It is very tmmannerly you are, to be 
casting up that yew tree against the King of 
Leinster. Sure he not to go hide in it, he might 
not be at this time in the living world. 

Rury: What now will Queen Gormleith have 
to say, her son and her brother the same as judged 
and executed, and the whole of their means made 
our prey. 

Phelan: That is a thing will not happen. I 
tell you, that is a lady is well able to bring a 
man from the foot of the gallows. She is not 
one would leave it to God to rule the world, 
the time she herself has a hand to put to the 
work. 

Brennain: Brian that was turning to be kind 
will not show kindness this time. He took it 
very bad, Maelmora and Sitric to stand up to 
him the way they did, and he after binding them 
by an act of peace. It is not consanguinity will 
save Queen Gormleith's brother, or get off her lad 
of a son. 

Phelan: She will gain safety for him, and for 
the two of them, through some enticement or some 
strategy of her own. It is easy seen, Brennain, 
that you were never joined with a wife. 

Brennain: If I was itself, there is no woman 
or no score of women, cranky or civil, coaxer or 



100 Kincora 

cross, would ever put me from my own opinion, 
1 once to have laid it down. 

Phelan: It is likely Brian will give in to the 
asking of the woman he will have beside him 
through the length of the four quarters of the 
year. Whinging and whining she will come to 
him; making threats she will go perish on their 
grave. I tell you there are women in it, would 
coax the entire world. 

Rury: And what way would it profit her, striv- 
ing to influence Brian? Sure there is no one has 
power to judge and to chastise these prisoners at 
all, but only the High King, that is Malachi. 

Brennain: It is a bad chastisement he will be 
apt to be giving them. Brian would be severe 
on no person if there was anything at all to be 
said for him. But as to a wind from the North, 
it will never be civil or kind. 

Rury: It will no way serve her to come pur- 
ring around Malachi. She knows that well her- 
self. It is more likely a taste she will give him of 
the sharpness of her claws. 

Phelan: The Lord be with Malachi she to set 
herself against him, in earnest! She would have 
him out of the High Kingship between this and 
the roosting of the hens. 

Rury: It is not likely Brian would be asking 
to earn the name of a grabber, snapping up the 
High Kingship for himself. 



Kincora loi 

Brennain: If he did grab it, he would turn it 
to better profit than what Malachi is doing. What 
signifies a High King that is satisfied with such 
things as may come into his hand, without any 
sort of big thoughts and of lofty plans? Brian 
now would stand at his own hall door and cast 
an eye over the whole of the domains of the 
world and Tir-nan-oge along with them. To get 
this country pacified, the way he could work out 
all that he had in his mind, that is what set him 
cracked and craving after peace. I never knew 
him to be disconcerted but the day that last 
treaty was tore. "Give me twenty year, or ten 
year itself, of quiet," says he to the Queen, "and 
the world will bow down to the name of Ireland." 
"Give us the High Kingship," says I to myself 
with myself, "and we will find something more to 
do with it, than to go racing garrans in Meath." 

Rury: No fear of you getting it. It was sealed 
and witnessed in the bond, Malachi to preserve it 
for his lifetime. 

Brennain: Brian to get it, he would make Ire- 
land the leader of the universe ! The men of arts 
from every part coming to learn their own trade; 
coming by shoals they would be, like mackerel on 
the spring tide ! Every smith of a forge shaping 
golden bracelets ! Every scholar in a school speak- 
ing the seven languages ! Every village of cabins 
a city with towers and with walls! Towers am I 



102 Kincora 

saying, no but rounded steeples would penetrate 
the thunder in the clouds. 

Rury: Well you are ^eat old warriors for giv- 
ing out boasting talk in Kincora. 

Brennain: It is Brian will put his orders on 
the ocean, on the narrow seas and the wide! His 
ships will go searching out every harbour! Every 
strange sail will moult and wither, getting a sight 
of his lime- white sail. He will put his rent on the 
kings of the world, they will pay him a heavy rent ! 

Rury: Pride grew in you, as rank as cabbage 
of the young moon, since you chancing on a 
straggler of your own! 

Brennain: Rents they will send, and tributes 
they will send! Sea-horses having blue eyes, 
barrels broke and bursting with the weight of 
rendered gold! Elephants' teeth, hairy men, and 
peacocks, the same as to Solomon of the Jews. 

Phelan: It was a woman's wit baffled King 
Solomon at the end, the time he thought to drive 
her from his house. What is Queen Gormleith apt 
to be at all that time? Do you think will she be 
satisfied to be sitting quiet, and her thoughts near 
as flighty as your own? 

Brennain: She will be satisfied and tethered 
and clogged, with the sight of the grandeur all 
aroimd! There is no woman at all but would 
be subjugated, and all the nations to be blowing 
the horn before her man. 



I 

II 



Kincora 103 

Rury: (Looks out of window. A shout outside.) 
There is King Brian himself at the door, and 
the people going cracked after him. Malachi 
should be on the road yet. I see no sign of 
him coming. It is best for me to go ask news 
of him, and be getting a shout for him by the 
time he will come in view. {Goes out.) 

{Brennain pushes Phelan off through door. 
Brian comes in, goes slowly to his chair.) 

Brennain: The Branch to King Brian! All 
the people are gone wild for you ! The poets are 
starting a poem about the great victory of 
Glenmama! A song with as many verses as my 
fingers and toes, and a great deed in every verse. 

Brian: That it may be a good one, for if 
I get my own way I will give them no cause to 
make songs from this out, on the head of 
battles or of slaughter. 

Brennain: Good is it? The words are com- 
ing as fast as the nmning of the Danes before 
us! Making for the sea they were the same as 
gulls; they are putting the screaming of gulls in 
the poem. 

Brian: Let them twang it a long way off! I 
have had enough of noises. {Sits down and takes 
off sword.) 

Brennain: What will we do with the treasures 
we brought away? The whole place is choked 
up with them. 



104 Kincora 

Brian: Make three shares of them. A share 
for the High King, and a share for the learned 
men, and a share for Kincora. 

Brennain: I will, I will keep the best share 
for otirselves. 

Brian: The best must go to the High King. 

Brennain: It is you yourself have a right to 
be High King, Brian, after this great victory. 
I tell you all Ireland is thirsting for it. 

Brian: I know, I know, they were sounding 
it out on the roads. They are calling out against 
two kings being in the one saddle. But they 
may deafen themselves with shouting before they 
will make me break my peace with Malachi. 

Brennain: They 'd sooner you. It is not Mala- 
chi will master the five provinces, tearing and 
spitting at one another the way they are. Five 
wild cats struggling in a bag, and four times 
five claws on every one of them. 

Beggar: {At door,) In the name of Brigit 
is beside me with her cloak, 

In the name of Michael is before me with his 
power, 

MacDuagh, MacDara, and Columcille of my 
love, 

I put this house under the power of the Man 
having the candle! 

Brian: Who is that? 

Brennain: Some travelling woman carrying 



Kincora 105 

the bag — the heavy sweat running down beside 
her — she should have been running on her road. 
{Beggar comes in.) What is it brings you here? 
What call have you coming here, you that are 
used to ditches and to haggards, to be standing on 
the royal threshold of the King? 

Brian: It is sometimes those that go sleeping 
on the straw of a haggard have their own view 
of the angels of heaven. You would seem not 
to have got any long sleep in any place. Where 
was it you spent the night-time? 

Beggar: Last night at the feet of the poor, 

To-morrow at the feet of the Son of God. 

I ran fast, and very fast, to come as far as 
yourself, Brian. 

Brian: What is it makes you so uneasy? 

Beggar: Looking I am for the hidden key. 
Go search it out yourself, King Brian, in this 
day of your great victory. 

For all you have won of silver and of store. 

And the people raising you in their arms, 

Let you be remembering bye and bye, 

Let you do your ploughing for the harvest in 
heaven ! 

Brian: God knows I have ears for that call 
if the hurry of the times did not hold me. 

Beggar: Come searching for the key of heaven. 
It is in some hidden vessel. 

Come out before your candle will be spent, 



io6 Kincora 

At the asking of the Man beyond, the King of 
Sunday. 

Make yourself ready for the day of the Moun- 
tain, 

Before your lease will be out and your summons 
written ! 

Brian: It is the wanderers of the world should 
be happy, being freed as they are to run that 
road. I myself am a labouring man under orders, 
having the weight of this {holding up sword) 
in my hands through the days and the hours and 
the months and the years. 

Beggar: Any labouring man at all would be 
free to throw down the scythe at the end of 
the day, and the bell ringing. 

Brian: In my contract, the Saturday night is 
all one with the Monday morning. It is the King 
of the Angels gave this to me. It is with it I am 
striving to cut the name of Ireland in clean let- 
ters among the nations. It is with this I have 
to do my work, until such time as the poor 
class, the people that are very sorry, will get 
some ease and some comfort and some wealth. 

Beggar: You are out of it! You are out of 
it! Bruise the ground and that will be done 
for you. Put that weighty thing out of your 
hand. Take in place of it nine drops of the 
water of wisdom — bring down Adam's paradise 
till we have it about us on every side; teach 



Kincora 107 

all the people to be telling the hours, till they 
have their eyes clear to see the angels walking 
Ireland in plenty! 

Brian: I will surely turn to no other work, the 
time I will have freed the whole of the country 
from all keening and mischief and treachery. It 
is to bring that time I have stooped my back 
till now from the rising of the sim. 

Beggar: That that time may come soon and 
come happy! 

Brian: Look now at that ring. It is worth 
great riches. Take it and give me your prayers. 
Bring me word that a lone woman can walk 
Ireland carrying a ring like that, and no one 
troubling her, and I will take it as a sign I 
am given leave to sit down at the table of the 
angels. 

Beggar: I will do that, I will do that for 
you. I will run and run till I will loosen your 
mind from its cares. My grief that I am not 
a salmon to go leaping through the streams of 
Ireland to bring news there is no blemish on its 
peace, or a crane to go flying in the same way. 
My grief that I have but these two bare feet. 
{Takes ring and turns to go,) 
Brigit of victories, put your cloak around me, 
Come, Michael Oge, and take me by the hand, 
O bush of shelter, O well reared archangel. 
Come travel beside me over ridges, over bogs! 



io8 Kincora 

Gormleiih: {Coming in) Brennain, take away 
this poor woman from the place she has no right 
to be, let her sit with the other beggars at the 
gate or give her a charity and let her go. Leave 
me here with the Eling. (Brennain and beggar 
go out.) 

Brian: Ah, my Queen, I had sent for you. 
Have you no welcome before me? 

Gormleiih: A welcome and a great welcome 
to you, Brian. 

Brian: It is in your words — ^but your face 
gives no good welcome. You are not looking 
flowery, but pale. 

Gormleiih: There has heavy news reached to 
me, that has put me to and fro. 

Brian: No wonder in that, my poor Gormleith. 
I your own comrade on the one side, and yotu* 
own blood and kindred on the other side, there 
must trouble fall upon you, whatever side is 
uppermost. 

Gormleith: The trouble is gone from me. 
You are back here with me, and you are not 
looking vexed but kind. 

Brian: My dear, you are nearer to me than 
my heart. 

Gormleith: I knew there would be no fear, 
you being in the one house with me again. 

Brian: There will be nothing to call us from 
one another from this out. We have a great 



Kincora 109 

work to do for this country together. Our best 
time is coming, and our shining time. 

Gormleith: And you will not refuse me my 
first request? 

Brian: You had no request to make up to 
this, because I gave all before your asking. 
Tell me what is it you are wanting from me 
now? 

Gormleith: You will put no hard punishment 
on Maelmora and on Sitric? You will not banish 
them out of Ireland? You will forgive them? 
You will let them go free? 

Brian: As for myself, the time of hardness is 
behind me. But you are forgetting it is not by 
me they must be judged. 

Gormleith: Ah, but whisper now, you will 
do it this time, you will make some way to bring 
it about? You woiild not see me fretting, fret- 
ting, after my son that is my darling — and 
my brother? 

Brian: It is the High King has to be judge. 

Gormleith: Malachi? Then they are the same 
as lost! What chance will they have facing him? 
He will be bitter against them on my account. 

Brian: You are not right saying that. It is 
given in to Malachi that he is a fair man and an 
honest man. 

Gormleith: It is not my son will get fair play 
from him. Judge him yourself, Brian, and give 



no Kincora 

him the punishment you think right, and what- 
ever it is I will make no complaint. 

Brian: I would be glad and very glad to 
comfort you, but that is a thing cannot be done. 

Gormleith: You are a great man and a great 
king. You can do everything. Give in to this 
now, and it is not to-day or to-morrow I will 
serve you, but every day. 

Brian: What I can give I have given, with- 
out any interest or any bargain. 

Gormleith: Why would you give in to Malachi? 
Through this while past he is lessening, you are 
strengthening, there is no one but will say you are 
the strongest. 

Brian: The law is stronger again. It is the law 
that the High King must judge kings and makings 
of kings. 

Gormleith: That is a crooked law. Break away 
from it, Brian. 

Brian: Give heed to me now, I agreed to the 
laws and swore to them, and I will not be the 
one to turn and to renage. You would have no 
good opinion of me yourself, Gormleith, I doing 
that. 

Gormleith: Then it is certain they will be sent 
to their death. 

Brian: They took the chance of that, and they 
going into the war. There are many have lost life 
and all through their work. 



Kincora iii 

Gormleiih: He will put me down, putting them 
down. That will not satisfy him. He will accuse 
me along with them, he will say I stirred them up. 
It is best for me to take my place beside them. 
Let the three of us be judged together. 

Brian: That will not happen. The High King 
himself would not dare to meddle with my wife. 

Gormleith: It will be best. It is not to banish- 
ment they will be sent. I will go meet my own 
death with them, with Sitric and with Maelmora. 
I will not go on living after them. My heart will 
break in me, and I will die! It is soon we all will 
be in the ground together. 

Brian: I thought the woman I married had 
more courage in her. 

Gormleiih: Ah, it is hard to keep courage when 
trouble comes scalding the heart. 

Brian: If they had been killed in any of 
their battles, you would have keened them, and 
put a high stone over them, and raised your head 
again and not given in to grief. 

Gormleiih: That would have been a good death. 
But what are they going to now but a poor shame- 
ful lonely death? Oh, Maelmora! Oh, Sitric! 
Oh, dear black head! Oh, my child that I have 
never wronged ! But God be with all the mothers 
of the world! 

Brian: You were brought up in a king^s house, 
you knew the rules of every quarrel and of every 



112 Kincora 

game. And you were married into kings' houses, 
and you shoiild know, whatever hand the cards 
come into, the game must be played out fair. 
And those laws and these rules will not be broken, 
even if they should break a queen's heart, or it 
might be a king's in its track. 

Mur rough: {Coming in.) Here now is the High 
King. 

Brian: Bring in the prisoners before him. 
{Mur rough goes out. Gormleith goes back into 
corner where she is not seen.) 

Malachi: {Comes in and sits down at table.) I 
was delayed on the way. Yotu* Munster roads 
are good inn-keepers, they would not let the 
wheels of my chariot go from them. 

{Mur rough comes in with Sitric and Mael- 
mora bound, followed by Brennain, 
Rury, and Phelan.) 

Brian: The prisoners are here before you. 

Malachi: There is no cause for delay. Their 
judgment will be a quick one. 

Brian: Let it be a merciful one as well as 
just. 

Malachi: It is sometimes what is the hardest 
to one or to two, is the punishment kindest at 
the last to the scores and the hundreds. 

Brian: Have they any excuse to make for 
themselves ? 

Murrough: They have made none to me. 



Kincora 113 

Malachi: There is no excuse for them to 
make. 

Brian: What have you to say in your own 
defence ? 

Murrough: You hear, Maelmora and Sitric, 
what my father is asking. 

Maelmora: I will say no word. I went out 
fighting, and the fight turned against me. 

Sitric: Where is the use of talking? Nothing 
I could say would turn your mind from what- 
ever you may have planned. 

Brian: What do you say. High King? 

Malachi: There is nothing to be said, but the 
story we all know before. These men were bound 
to peace, they had promised peace. I had need 
of quiet, Brian was calling for quiet, the whole 
coimtry was in need of it. The whole of Ireland 
was a raddled fleece, a flock torn by wild dogs. 
We that were as if herding, were tired out with 
keeping them off. We made out an agreement 
together. I agreed to give up a great deal to 
Brian for the sake of a settlement, and I held 
to my word, and they broke their word. There 
is no one can put trust in them from this out. 
That is the whole story. Is there a lie in what 
I have said, Brian? 

Brian: There is no lie in it. All you have said 
is true. 

Malachi: You know well what way the law 



114 Kincora 

would condemn them; and these have no more 
right to law than a dog or a fox from the woods. 

Brian: That would mean death. 

Malachi: The wild dog that is hanged will 
worry no sheep. The fox that is dead will de- 
vour no lambs. 

Murrough: They can make no complaint. 
They did not spare their own prisoners, or their 
rebels. 

Gormleith: {Coming forward.) Malachi! 

Malachi: (Sternly and rising.) This is not a 
right place for you, or a fitting place. 

Gormleith: Malachi, the time you and I myself 
parted one from another, there was many a thing 
to forgive between us. Whatever you may have 
working in your mind against myself, I beg and 
pray you not to let it work against these. 

Malachi: God knows, that is above us, there 
is nothing in my heart against them, but the 
thing all this country that they have wronged 
must have against them, the attack made by 
them upon the peace of Ireland, and the great 
slaughter done by their means at Glenmama. 

Gormleith: I will ask no other thing of you 
for ever, Malachi, but to stretch out now and to 
forgive them. 

Malachi: I would wish any other in the whole 
world to have made that request, till I would 
show it is no grudge or no malice is making 






li 



Kincora 115 

me refuse it, but the great necessity of this 
country. 

Gormleith: Put it from your mind there is any 
woman before you, but only King Brian's wife. It 
is a good man's wife is making this asking. 

Malachi: It is his own good name I am 
serving. I am not willing for the people to 
say, and the generations that are rising, that King 
Brian came meddling with the laws that are for 
their protection and their safety. It is not Brian 
would wish it to be said among the people, it 
was a woman came aroimd us and misled us. 

Gormleith: Ah, if it is to the people you are 
calling to bear witness, I can tell you what is it 
the people are saying. They say it is you yoiu-- 
self have the sway, and that it is tmder yotu* 
sway all they own has been turned to wrack 
and to ruin. Yes, Brian, I know what I am 
saying {Brian has tried to interrupt her). In his 
early days there was no one to beat him, he was 
wary, he was hardy, he was great. But look now 
the way things are in his province, and in every 
place that is under him! No one travelling your 
highways, but it is in the byroads men must 
creep, your wheat fields all headland, the children 
treading on the himgry grass. They are cursing 
you for that. Oh, I have heard them. They 
say they would as soon be under the wicked Danes 
as imder Malachi that is turned careless and 



1 16 Kincora 

turned weak. That is why you will not let off 
these enemies that are beaten! You are afraid to 
show kindness, you are in dread of those poor 
hungry people, you are in dread they would 
say, ^'Take his place away from him, we were 
right; Malachi has turned to be weak." 

Malachi: You have said one true word, 
Gormleith, saying that I am in dread. I am that. 
I am afraid to show kindness. And I do not 
say but that these two left alone would be apt 
to give in, and to carry out their bargain straight 
and fair. But they would not do it, and they 
would not be let do it. It was I myself brought 
you back from the Danes, thinking to turn you 
to be loyal as a queen should. And it failed 
me to do it, and it will fail Brian, and it has 
failed him! 

Brian: Take heed what you are saying ! You 
are coming near to danger saying that. 

Malachi: Danger, yes there is danger wher- 
ever this woman comes, and I have one ques- 
tion to put to her. The cause of this last war 
to be searched out, who is it would be found at 
the root of it? 

Gormleith: I told you, Brian, he would draw 
down this on me, I forewarned you. It is best 
for me to take my place between my two. I 
will take my chance along with them. {She 
goes between Maelmora and Sitric.) If the fault 



Kincora 117 

was mine, let me pay the penalty. An unkind 
word to be thrown at a woman, it is little till 
it brings down her name altogether. The tree 
to begin to fade, what is there would bring it 
arotmd? Malachi, I am willing to take you as 
my judge. You have accused me, give out 
the decree against me. Judge me here now on 
this floor. 

Malachi: I have no mind to judge any one 
at all, in this place. I made a great mistake 
giving in to come into it at all. 

Brian: It was laid down between us, this work 
was to be done in Kincora. 

Malachi: I had no business coming here to 
be checked and dogged on every side. Tara is 
the place for judgments, and not the house of a 
king of a province. 

Brian: This is a house that had the name of 
an honest house, and of a house for fair play to 
the high-up and to the poor. 

Malachi: There is too much meddling in it, 
meddling that will lead to confusion and the 
breaking of laws. I lay it on you, Brian, to 
keep order in the first place in your own home. 
As to these kinsmen of yours, I will bring them 
as I had a right to have done at the first, to 
Tara and before the Council of Tara. 

Gormleith: You have very big pride in Tara, 
Malachi. But all Ireland knows, and you know, 



ii8 Kincora 

this man could put you out of it to-day if he 
wotdd but lift his hand up and give the sign. 
It is only his kindness and his good will have left 
you up to this the name of being High King. 

Malachi: Is that your own opinion, Brian, or 
is it but the giddy talk of a woman that is 
vexed? If you think yourself equal to me, say it 
out, and the two of us will settle the case 
together. 

Brian: I do say it. I say the time is come 
when there can be but one master in Ireland. 

Malachi: I agree to that. But whoever has 
Tara is master. 

Brian: Wherever the greatest strength is, the 
Hill of Tara is. My strength has dragged Tara 
westward. 

Malachi: liwill not give in to that. It is 
only in Tara I will give from this out any decree 
or any judgment. 

Brian: Then I will give out my own judgment. 
I draw down on Maelmora, King of Leinster, 
that he has broken from the league made with 
me and the High King of Ireland, and turned 
his hand against us. I draw down on Sitric, the 
Dane, the great oppression he and his people 
have done upon Ireland. 

Murrough: I will tell our men outside they 
have your orders to come in and to bring them 
to their death. > 



I 



Kincora 119 

Brian: They have earned death and well 
earned it. They have nothing to urge against 
it. But stop! Let no one meddle with them! I 
will leave them their liberty and their life. 

Malachi: If Brian had not said that, I would 
say a fool had said it. 

Brian: I am strong enough to show kindness, 
I have done with killing, I will have no more 
of it. 

Malachi: If you let them go, there will be 
quarrels again and killing. 

Brian: I think not. They have learned their 
lesson, they know their master. 

Murrough: If you let them go, it is hardly our 
own army will let them. 

Brian: Is it with the threat of an army you are 
thinking to force me, boy? 

Murrough: It is as if you yourself are forcing 
a peace. 

Brian: That is what I am doing and what I 
have the right to do. I will make an end of 
quarrels. I will make an end of this custom of 
death answering to death through the generations, 
like the clerks answering to one another at 
the Mass. I will force a peace. Murrough, 
cut these cords. {Murrough does so slowly.) 

Malachi: It is against my will you are doing it. 

Brian: Are they freed .f^ Give back their arms 
to these kings. 



120 Kincora 

Malachi: They are no kings now, but traitors 
that have been worsted. 

Brian: I say they are kings. Maelmora, I give 
you back your own kingdom of Leinster. Sitric, 
I give you your old town of Dublin to keep and 
to mind, for Ireland and for me. 

Malachi: {Rising,) This is war then and the 
breaking of peace. 

Brian: It is not, but the beginning of peace. 

Malachi: I will raise Connacht against you. 
I will call to my kinsmen in the north. 

Gormleith: You know well you will get no 
help from the north, or from any other place, 
against King Brian. 

Malachi: That will be known soon and very 
soon. 

Brian: If you think you can keep the High 
Kingship by force, I will give you the length of 
a month or of a quarter to bring your men to- 
gether. 

Malachi: A month will be enough. I will 
lose no minute. The north and the west will be 
against you. {He goes out followed by Rury.) 

Brian: War upon us again. Well, it was laid 
down — ^and I am ready. 

Gormleith: He will get no help, Brian. No 
one at all will come out against you. His 
own messenger has said that in a song. He 
went east and west, north and south, and he 



Kincora 121 

found the one story in every place. There was 
not a man in all Ireland that would raise a 
hand against King Brian. 

Brian: His own messenger has said that? Then 
the sap of power has turned from him to me. 
The Man beyond is giving Ireland into my charge ! 
His right hand is stretched over the north, his 
left to the south towards the sun, his face is 
towards the west. His angels have set their lad- 
der upon Usnach, Victor, angel of Patrick, Axal, 
angel of Columcille, Michael, leader of armies! 
It is a great thing they are doing for me giving 
me the help of their hands. (Rises.) Ireland, Ire- 
land, I see you free and high and wealthy; wheat 
in every tilled field, beautiful vessels in the houses 
of kings, beautiful children well nourished in 
every house. No meddling of strangers within 
our merings, no outcry of Gael against Gael! It 
is not so, Malachi will get help. Why am I 
taking the words of a woman, of a song? I have 
not done with war. (Malachi comes back.) 

Murrough: He has come back to ask more time. 

Brian: If he is in need of more time, I will 
give him up to a year. 

Malachi: I have a hard thing to say. I will 
not bring destruction on my people. I take back 
my big words. The luck has turned against me. 
The people have ttuned from me. I have no help 
to get. Queen Gormleith was speaking truth. 



122 Kincora 

Brian: You are saying you will not bring 
out yotu* men against us? 

Malachi: I will keep them ready, but it will be 
against the Gall. 

Brian: You will give up all you are claiming. 
You will give up that crown? 
■ Malachi: I will not, but I must. {Takes it off.) 

Brian: God has given me the power, it is to 
God I have to answer, it is for the peace of 
Ireland I have taken it. 

Malachi: {Giving it.) Take it and the weight 
of it. Yet it was in the prophecy that I would 
be king after you in Tara. 

Brian: I lift it in my hand that is stronger 
than your hand. I will send out the name of this 
kingdom through the entire world. I will bring 
all Ireland under the one strong rule. 

Gormleith: Long life and a good life to Brian, 
High King of Ireland! 

All {but Malachi): Long life to the High King. 

Malachi: It is not you, yourself, Brian, have 
done this. It may seem to you this queen has 
brought you luck doing it. She has tmned my 
luck backwards. Who is the next she will turn 
her hand against? 

Gormleith: {Going on her knees.) Do not listen 
to him, Brian. I would walk the world for you, 
and you having showed kindness to my darlings! 
You are my master, he never mastered me! In 



Kincora 123 

the time to come whoever may fail you, I myself 
will never fail or disappoint you! 

Brian: {Lifting her and turning to Brennain.) 
Brennain, you need not share these riches. They 
are little enough altogether to offer to the Queen 
of Tara. {They all turn to look at the spoils.) 

Rury: {At door.) The coach is ready, master. 
The horses are fed and rested. {He goes out.) 

Malachi: {At threshold.) I will go. I have 
been long enough in this little place. A little 
place, a narrow place for so much buying and 
selling. Great gains, great losses. The crown of 
Ireland for Brian, the High Kingship for Brian, 
the treasiires of Glenmama for Gormleith. Who 
has the worst of it.^^ Brian has that Crow of Bat- 
tle! {Goes out.) 

Curtain 



Act III 

[before clontarf] 

Scene: Same room at Kincora, Gormleith sitting 
in a chair gloomily, her head in her hands, 
Sitric asleep at hack, Maelmora comes in, 

Maelmora: Are you so much up in the world 
at this time, Gormleith, that you will not give 
me a welcome? 

Gormleith: {Getting up to greet him.) I did not 
know you were come. They never told me. Speak 
easy. Do not waken Sitric, he is only here a short 
while. He was travelling through the night time 
from Dublin. 

Maelmora: They told me you were here. They 
said you did not like to be troubled with mes- 
sengers. 

Gormleith: I do not like the messages they bring 

me, that is all. "Will the Queen come to hear the 

reading of holy writings?" "Will the Queen come 

to make ready for saints and bishops? '* " Will the 

124 



Kincora 125 

Queen come and kneel to wash the muddy feet 
of the poor?" 

Maelmora: Brian is surely getting a great name 
of piety to put along with his name of riches and 
of power; having, as he has, his head in the skies, 
and his hand in every good work. 

Gormleith: Where is the use of gaining power 
if you go turn from it after to shadows? Heaven 
may be there as they say, but it is on earth we 
are living yet. We cannot stop the work of the 
day to go blinking after dreams of the night. And 
that is the thing Brian is doing at this time. 

Maelmora: If he does, it is that age is coming 
upon him as it must come upon us all. What ails 
you not to let him travel his own way? 

Gormleith: There is no other way to rouse him. 
It is laid on me to keep him to the strength and 
the power of a king. It is I myself made him 
call the whole army together on this day, to do 
its exercises that you were bidden to come and 
see. 

Maelmora: I took notice a long way off of the 
tents and the flags and great troops of men. But 
what occasion is there for gathering them at this 
time more than any other time? 

Gormleith: When Brian will see his men that 
helped him in his fighting time, it may stir his 
mind with the thought of those days, and turn it 
to do some great hardy thing. 



126 



Kincora 



Maelmora: You had best have left the army 
to its rest. There is no peacock can have his tail 
spread out ever and always. And mind what I 
say, it is a woman's trade to be making all easy 
for her comrade the time he has a mind to live 
easy. To go rising early, himting, or fighting, he 
is well content to do it, if it is of himself he does 
it. But a woman to be rousing him at the calling 
of the pigeons to the dawn, and to be drawing 
down on him the work he has to do, he will think 
her the worst in the world. 

Gormleiih: I am wishful indeed to be pleasant 
to him. He was very good to me. The world 
never saw a better man. 

Maelmora: Give in to him now and humour 
him. If it pleases him to make much of learned 
men, let you yourself make more again of them. 
If it pleases him to be praying, let you be at hand 
to say out the Amen ; and believe me you will put 
a net about him that will never give way. 

Gormleith: Indeed I have striven these many 
years to be helpful to him. He used to be uneasy, 
not having me at his hand. I lived in his looks 
and he in mine. 

Maelmora: That is the way it should be. 
Let you keep on that road and you will never 
go astray. 

Gormleith: But now it seems like as if my hold 
on him is going from me. His mind is as if slip- 



Kincora 127 

ping away to some place I cannot reach to, that 
I do not know. 

Maelmora: He is near spun out, and it is right 
for him to be attending to his soul. Do not be 
grudging him his own comfort in fasting and in 
psalms. To be worrying yourself starts wrinkles. 
Keep the flowery look in your face and do not 
be managing more than your share. Did you 
learn yet to put thread in a needle? The clasp 
is gone from this cloak. Have you e'er a one 
to give me before I will wear it again? 

{Sitric moves and leans on elbow listening!) 

Gormleith: I will put my own clasp on it and 
welcome. When was the old one lost? 

Maelmora: It was in the jotimey this morning. 
My people and the people of the Desii were bring- 
ing the fir trees Brian had sent asking for, and a 
dispute arose who should take the lead. I was 
not willing there should be any delay, and I put 
my own shoulder under one of the trees. 

Gormleith: You, my brother, put your shoulder 
imder a load? 

Maelmora: There was no dispute after that 
who was to take the lead. But the branch of a 
tree caught in the clasp and dragged it, and it 
was lost. 

Gormleith: You, the King of Leinster, carried 
a load of timber into Kincora! I will sew no 
clasp upon the cloak. 



128 Kincora 

Maelmora: I saw no shame doing that much 
for Brian that gave me my Hberty and my life. 

Gormleith: But I myself see great shame in 
it. I see you growing dull and soft and gentle, 
like an old man that would be nearing his end. 

Maelmora: Quiet yourself, Gormleith. You 
were always wild in yoiu* young youth, dragging 
me there and hither from the nurses. You have 
had the tormenting of three husbands since that 
time. Leave your brother alone. 

Gormleith: I will not give in to it ! It is Brian 
is bringing you to it with the doing away of war. 
No marching and nmning and wrestling, but at- 
tending on the preaching of the friars. There is 
not a hound belonging to you dares so much as to 
follow a hare across the merings, without leave 
from the judges or the law. You are getting no 
fair play, closed in here and there, having no 
liberty in the way you used, to go out fighting 
for yoiu- own profit. I tell you, the time Brian 
will die from you, he will leave you weak and 
groping and blind, your hands without strength 
or readiness, by reason of having slackened from 
the work. Drowsy you are growing the same as 
old spent men. The priest sounds the bell, and 
Brian follows it, and the rest of you follow after 
Brian. 

Maelmora: My poor Queen, I give you up al- 
together. You were surely bom on a Friday, and 



Kincora 129 

the briars breaking through the green sod. Give 
me my cloak and I will go where the chess players 
are. Murrough called to me from there a while 
ago. 

Gormleith: I will sew no clasp upon the cloak, 
or let you put it on you at all. It is no up-reared 
man it is fit for, but a serving man. Let the 
fire biirn it to ashes, the fire is its fitting place. 

{She throws it in the fire and Maelmora goes 
out. Sitric rises up and comes for- 
ward.) 

Sitric: That was good talk you were giving out 
to Maelmora. It is a queer thing a brother of 
yotir own to be some way sleepy and easy to 
satisfy. 

Gormleith: I am no way to be blamed for my 
brother; but it woiild be right to put blame on 
me, my son to turn sluggish in the same way. 
And that is not a likely thing to happen. It is 
not my son that is without sap running in him. 
It is not a king's son of the Danes will content 
himself using meat, or stretched in sleep like a 
rich man, or calling out his sins like an old man, 
or a man on his last sick bed. 

Sitric: I knew well you would give your coim- 
tenance to the work I have taken in hand. 

Gormleith: What work is that? 

Sitric: I am come from joining with my own 
people. There was a ship of their ships came to 
9 



130 Kincora 

Dublin, bringing presents for Brian, as was said. 
The whole of their ships are on their way. It is 
given out they are to make an attack upon Wales. 
It is not to Wales that they are going. When 
the Danes were driven out from here, there was 
no one of them gave up the claim to his land 
and its ownership. It is to get back their estates 
they are coming with their army at this time. 

Gormleith: The Danes coming against us? 

Sitric: Brian will be left his own estate and 
his domain. Never fear, there will no harm hap- 
pen him. He will be left with the most thing 
he cares for, with his churches and with his bells. 

Gormleith: The Danes coming back to Ireland ! 
That is a thing that must not happen ! I will not 
let it be done! They must be driven back if they 
make any attempt to land. 

Sitric: It is at Clontarf they are coming to 
land. I myself am giving them my help, and I 
am expecting your own help. 

Gormleith: You are out of your wits thinking 
that. You know well I will give you no help. 
What you are thinking to do is no less than 
treachery. 

Sitric: What way were you scolding at Mael- 
mora this very minute, casting up against him 
that he was soft and peaceable, clogged with ease, 
doing nothing for his own hand? You were jib- 
ing at him because he gave in to Brian's law. I 



Kincora 131 

have my mind made up to break away from it, 
and you are no better content with myself. You 
know well you were calling out this good while, 
that nothing would serve the coimtry but some 
war. 

Gormleith: I tell you I will not let treachery 
be used by any one that is belonging to me. If 
I called for war, I did not call to you to bring it, 
but to leave it to the chances of the times. 

Sitric: If you had not led me to make sure 
of your help, why would I have promised it to 
Sigurd Earl of Orkney and to Brodar of the Isle 
of Man? 

Gormleith: You promised them that? 

Sitric: They asked a promise. Sigurd would 
not come join us without your call, he wrote his 
asking in this letter. Brodar wrote an asking of 
his own — there are the letters, you have to put 
your name to them. We have not so good a 
chance without having Brodar and Sigurd at our 
back. 

Gormleith: {Reading letters.) What daring they 
have, writing that! What sort are they thinking 
me to be? I will send them no answer at all. 
I will go and tell out the whole case to Brian. Let 
Brian himself send the answer. 

Sitric: Do so, and make ready a sheet for my 
burying. It is known I have been speaking with 
the messengers of the Danes. I am surely dead, 



132 Kincora 

or as good as dead, you making Brian uneasy 
and questioning. 

Gormleith: Hurry, hurry then, go away out of 
this! I will not tell him until such time as you 
are safe. Make no delay! I must give the warn- 
ing. He must lead his army to protect Clontarf . 
Go, hurry, make yourself safe. 

Sitric: Where would I go to? In what place 
would I be safe? Is it in Brian's country, hunted 
as an outlaw? Or with the Danes, telling them I 
had broken my promise and my word? I have 
no mind to go wandering, hiding in bushes and 
under rocks. 

Gormleith: I will send you word if Brian goes 
against you — I will not let any harm fall on you. 
Go, now go. 

Sitric: I will not quit this place, until such time 
as your name is put to this letter and to that. % 

Gormleith: You are talking madness. That 
would be a treason out of measure! I am bound 
to Brian. I will be faithful to Brian. I am well 
pleased I turned against Malachi. I will never 
fail Brian or disappoint him. 

Brennain: {At door.) The High King is com- 
ing here. Queen, to take a view of the army 
from the door. 

Sitric: You have leave to give me up to him. 
I am well rewarded for taking heed to a woman's 
words. It is only a fool would pay attention to 



II 



Kincora 133 

big words from any woman at all. Queen or no 
queen she will turn timorous, and run and fail you 
at the last. 

Brian: {Coming in.) You are welcome here, 
Sitric. Did you bring any strange news from 
Dublin? They were telling me you had calling on 
you some messengers of the Danes. 

Sitric: A ship that called to me with pay- 
ments. They have sent back at your order the 
golden vessels and the painted books that were 
stolen from the churches in the time gone by. 
There are here a couple of the books. The vessels 
are weighty, they are at the door below. (Shows 
books.) 

Brian: I am well pleased to get them. I would 
not wish those holy vessels to be left in any 
heathen hands. Go, Sitric, give them into the 
hands of the priests to be put in the chapel be- 
fore the vespers will ring. I will call to the 
Bishops to consecrate them, coming back to 
the service of Christ. 

Sitric: The ship having left them, sailed awa3^ 

(Goes.) 

Brian: Take notice. Queen, that the men of 
the army have been gathered together according 
to your desire. 

Gormleith: (At window.) I was looking at them 
a while ago. The hillsides are speckled with the 
troops of them. 



134 Kincora 

Brian: (Sitting down,) It is a comfortable 
thought it is only for show and for pleasure they 
are come. We have nothing to go out fighting 
for any more. 

Brennain: That is so, that is so, what need 
is there for fighting? Men of all learning 
struggling at the door, seven kings' messengers 
asking our friendship, a hundred cooks dressing 
the dinner, a tim of wine offered us for every 
day in the year. We will have to widen the 
whole world to hold Ireland, and to widen Ire- 
land itself to hold Kincora! 

Gormleith: {Turning to Brian.) Come and 
look from the window. You can see a great 
throng of your men. 

Brian: I think the time is come when I can 
let them all scatter to their own districts. 

Gormleith: We have work for them to do 
together yet. 

Brian: Their best work would be to put a 
thatch to their houses, and to turn all the wild 
scrub to barley gardens. What did the wander- 
ing woman say? To bring down Adam*s Para- 
dise again. I had some dream in the night 
time, it has gone from me — some dream of a 
place where war was not remembered. 

Gormleith: It is best to keep our men to the 
work they are trained for, that is fighting. 

Brian: I have made Ireland safe. I have put 



Kincora 135 

her name up among the nations. I have put on 
her the three crowns, the crown of wheat for 
strength, the crown of apples for pleasantness, 
the crown of lasting peace. I will break up 
the army for a year and a day. I will leave 
every man time to forgive his enemies, and to 
make his own settlement with God. 

Gormleith: {Coming to Brian) You would 
make a great mistake doing that. I give you 
a strong advice to keep the army at its full 
strength. Believe me I am not without reason 
saying that. 

Brian: Has there any news come to you of 
danger? 

Gormleith: News, news, it is nothing new I 
am saying. Ireland has been fighting these ten 
thousand years, and that custom to be changed, 
it is likely she would go to nothing. Peace, the 
priests have their tongues framed to it, peace, 
peace, peace. Is it certain it is so good a thing? 
Some that know all might not say that. It is 
in the sluggish time the little men grow to be 
many, and the great men give up living, and the 
trader has the sway. It is not you yourself 
would be satisfied, seeing that time to come. 

Brian: I will be satisfied and well satisfied the 
time I will have shaped everything that is tmder 
me to the will of God. There is no fighting in 
that good place the Almighty has of his own. 



136 Kincora 

Gormleith: This is the world and you cannot 
change the world's old custom. There must be 
fighting so long as there is anything at all worth 
fighting for. If there was not war in the world 
it wotdd be right to make a war, to search out 
something to hate. Yes, I know all the talk of 
love and charity, but it is not of malice I am 
talking, but of the ftuy of a blast of wind 
against a heap of rotten dust. Keep your army 
ready to your hand now. Have you never a mind 
to go forcing the Cross on the nations of the East ? 
Armenia, where the Holy Tree was put up, is 
owned now by heathens that deny it. Other 
uses to fail, that would be a great thing and a 
grand thing for your army to do. 

Brian: If I had a score less of years upon me, 
that wotild be a good thing to do. But the time 
fails me, and I have no leave to do but the one 
thing. I have leave in my own narrow kingdom 
to begin the thousand years of peace. 

Gormleith: Maybe some danger may rise up. 
We are never done with danger. Suppose now 
the Danes should come attacking, striving to 
win back what they have lost. 

Brian: That is a thing will not happen. 

Gormleith: They are coveting to get back their 
old estates — they will not give up what they 
owned so readily as you may think. They might 
§end out a fleet of ships — they might make it out 



Kincora 137 

to be going to some other place — they might 
gather other leaders to their help. When all 
would seem safe and quiet, just as it does this 
day, they might come to land suddenly — giving 
no warning. Let you keep your men ready for 
that. 

Brian: Sitric has but just come from seeing 
their messengers and speaking with them. He 
has the whole strand in his charge, he would 
know if there was any thought of an attack. 
There is no fear of the Danes. 

Gormleith: Yes, yes, Sitric would know — 
then they cannot be coming. But the provinces? 
You said you would not take your hand from the 
work till you had made all quiet in the provinces. 
There is a stir in them. They are starting up 
against you here and there. They are going 
back to their lawless ways. There is a king of 
Burren wanting to force a rent on Galway. 
There are uproars and robberies in the north. 

Brian: That is bad news, but it may not be 
true, it may have grown in the telling. Are 
you very certain it is true? 

Gormleith: I am certain. 

Brian: I am sorry indeed to hear that. I 
thought the very day had come when I could 
free myself from this {touches sword) altogether. 
But that hope was a deceit and a flattery. 

Gormleith: Come out now and consult with 



138 Kincora 

the captains. Bid them make themselves ready 
to go and put down all these troubles. 

Brian: If there is trouble to be put down I 
myself will go and do it. I will not slacken my 
hand so long as there is work to be done. But 
my heart is tired out with waiting for the keen- 
ing and the treachery to be at an end. 

Gormleith: Come out, come out before the door. 
They will give you a great welcome there. 

{They are going to door when Brennain 
appears in it.) 

Brennain: There is some one here that is 
asking to see the King. 

Gormleith: The King cannot see any person 
at all at this time. 

Brian: Who is it is wanting me? 

Brennain: The travelling woman was here a 
long time ago — she has the appearance of one that 
would be wasted and worn with the length of the 
road. 

Brian: Bid her to come in. {Brennain turns 
and lifts handy Beggar comes in.) 

Beggar: It is many long days since I saw you 
before, King Brian. 

Brian: What have you been going through in 
all that time? 

Beggar: Going on my two feet, tramping fro 
and hither, looking for the news would free you 
to sit down at the table of the angels. 



Kincora 139 

Brian: Christ knows well I would hurry to 
that supper, and I being free to attend it. But 
I am hindered here and there. At this time the 
trouble and the disturbance is in the provinces of 
Ireland. 

Beggar: There is no disturbance and no 
trouble. 

Brian: What way can you know that? 

Beggar: {Holding up ring.) Are you remem- 
bering the ring you gave me? There it is before 
you. I had to hide it for a good while, the time 
of quiet was not come. But at the last I have 
walked the whole country, and I lifting it up in 
my hand. 

Brian: Did you go with yourself only, with- 
out company? 

Beggar: Through the five provinces I went, 
from this to Toraigh in the north and from that 
again to Cliona*s wave in the south, witii no one 
but myself and the goodness of the Lord. 

Brian: Did no one meddle with you? 

Beggar: When I was passing through Con- 
nacht there were young men riding horses, and 
they came as if at me. But then they said: 
"We will leave her free seeing we ourselves are 
free and all Ireland is free." 

Brennain: That is good, that is good. If 
Connacht is quiet all Ireland is quiet. 

Beggar: When I went down into the north I 



140 Kincora 

took notice of a troop of rough men and one of 
them said: "It is no harm to rob this girl that is 
of the province of Munster." But another man 
of them said : " Do not, for it is not to the north or 
the south we belong now, but to the whole of 
Ireland." And for the peace of the whole coimtry, 
King Brian, they thank God and you. 

Brian: That is a lucky jotuney you have 
made, and a great story you have brought me. 
Many a woman has sat beside a king through 
her lifetime, and has done less than that to 
be remembered by. 

Beggar: You can put away your sword this 
time, and turn your face entirely towards Heaven. 

Gormleith: The King has work to do yet. 
His life has not run to its end. 

Beggar: You are out of it. Queen, his life is 
near its beginning — the beginning of the lasting 
life of Heaven. 

Gormleith: You do well preaching quiet, and 
your own heart so imeasy. You run here and 
run there, changing and vanishing like the moon. 

Beggar: I run towards my home that is in 
the place beyond. I will take my rest when 
I have reached my home. Now I will go, I 
have given my message to the King. 

Brian: It is a great message you have car- 
ried. It is from beyond the world it is come. 
This great new peace was made for me beyond 



Kincora 141 

the world. I saw it in a vision of the night. It 
is your voice is calling it back to me. 

Beggar: It is likely it was the one message 
sent by some other messenger. 

Brian: I saw in my dream a woman coming 
to me, many coloured, changing, that was 
Aoibhell the friend of my race. She came and 
she called to me and swept the darkness away, 
and showed me the whole coimtry, shining and 
beautiftd, an image of the face of God in the 
smooth sea. All bad things had gone from it 
like plover to the north at the strengthening of 
the sun. The rowan berries on Slieve Echtge 
were the lasting fruits of Heaven. The Gael had 
grown to be fitting comrades for the white an- 
gels. I could hear the joyful singing of the birds 
of the Land of Promise. 

Beggar: That was a good vision and a very 
good dream. Those that hear that music will 
never be satisfied in any place where it is not 
found. 

Brian: It went from me then, and I cried out 
after it, but Aoibhell said: "It is only at Clon- 
tarf you will come again to that vision and that 
perfect peace." 

Beggar: Why did she say Clontarf ? I wonder 
what meaning she had in that. 

Brian: It is often dreams have not a straight 
meaning, or waking breaks it. It is here at Kin- 



142 Kincora 

cora I have had a witness to the perfect peace I 
and not at Clontarf. Now, now at last I can 
put away my sword! 

Beggar: Give it here to me. Give me that 
sword, I will hang it here upon the wall. {He 
gives it and she hangs it up.) 

Gormleith: Has the army that is outside gone 
from your mind? 

Brian: I am going out to it now, it is the last 
time I will have need of it. I will set every 
man of them free after the supper, that will be 
the feast of God's peace. 

Gormleith: I ask of you, Brian, and I beg and 
I pray you to give in to what I say. I came 
here to put your name up, to bring you luck. 
I turned every stone for you, you will lose 
your name, you will lose me, oh, what can I 
say to turn you? 

Brian: Have I and time not quieted this 
whirling heart? Go get yourself ready for the 
supper. Put on your silks and your jewels to 
do honour to it, your eyes^ are shining, they 
will shine out at the feast. 

Beggar: Come, Brian, to the supper of the 
angels. To the Garden of Paradise and the 
branchy Tree of Life. 

Gormleith: Go away, woman, out of this ! He 
wotdd listen to what would save him, and you 
not meddling! You are putting spells of weak- 



Kincora 143 

ness on him with your hymns. Do not let her 
entice you, Brian ! Do not Hsten to that travel- 
ling woman of the roads, that tattered moon- 
mad beggar. 

Brian: It is not her voice is calling to me but 
the voices from the place beyond. 

Beggar: {At door,) 

Gabriel, the Virgin's messenger, is come, 

Michael, the rider of the speckled horse, is 
come. 

Axal, the good steerer, Rafael of our love 

Giving out the blessing for the supper of the 
King. 

Gormleith: Go then, go, go to your destruc- 
tion, drag the King to his destruction, let him 
go his own way ! I do not begrudge it to him or 
to you. I tried to save him. He would not 
listen. He has made his choice, I am not in 
f atdt ! The curse of Ireland be upon all beggars 
and their meddlings! 

Brian: {Turning hack in doorway.) Go, Gorm- 
leith, to the chiurch and pray, bend your knees, 
pray and repent, pray and repent, till the wild- 
ness has gone from yoiu* eyes and the pride 
from your heart, and the darkness from your 
vexed imhappy mind. {He goes out.) 

Gormleith: Go then, go, I have done all 
I can do. I have done. I have no place and no 
part in you! I have not, I have not, I am 



144 Kincora 

done with Kincora. {She throws herself in chair 
tearing her handkerchief in her rage. Maelmora 
and Sitric come in.) 

Maelmora: We thought Brian was with 
you. 

Gormleith: What brings you back here? Have 
you no more loads to carry? Why are you not 
carrying firing for the priests that have mastered 
your High King? 

Maelmora: This is a good welcome I am getting 
this day. Insults from you and insults from 
Murrough. 

Gormleith: What did you do to anger your 
master's son? 

Sitric: He was watching Murrough at the 
chess and he gave an advice, and Murrough 
followed it and lost the game. Murrough was 
angry then. 

Maelmora: I would not stop to listen to him. 
He has no right to put insults on me. 

Gormleith: He had a right to do it. You give 
in to a master that gives in to monks and beggars. 
It is certain you and Ireland were never under 
disgrace till now. 

Sitric: You will sign these letters now, I 
think, that you would not sign a while ago. 

Gormleith: I will — I will! Give them to me 
quickly. He made little of me. He will be sorry. 
He bid me go and pray, he bid me repent. I 



Kincora 145 

will not, it is he himself will be made repent! 

{Takes up pen.) 

Maelmora: What is it you are doing? 

Gormleith: I am breaking away from Brian, 
I am breaking Brian's peace. 

Maelmora: You, his wife? 

Gormleith: It was to a great king I came as 
a wife, not to a monkish man serving heaven on 
his knees. 

Maelmora: {Holding her hand.) You must 
not go against him. — He that gave you all. 

Gormleith: He has taken all away that was 
worth having. 

Sitric: Let her sign. 

Maelmora: This is no less than treachery. 

Gormleith: Go and call your king, so, and give 
me up to him. {She signs.) Send the letters, 
Sitric, I am ready to go. {Gets up.) 

Maelmora: Where are you going? 

Gormleith: To welcome the foreign armies that 
are on the sea now coming to Ireland. 

Maelmora: You must not do it! I will not 
let you be a traitor in this house. 

Gormleith: Be a king again, Maelmora; join 
with us and fight in the old way. You yourself 
and Sitric could keep Ireland against all the world. 

Maelmora: I will call out to Brian. 

Gormleith: You need not call to him. Here 
is Murrough his son, give us up to him, humble 



10 



14^ Kincora 

us before him. Humble yourself before him, and 
let the son of the Connacht woman put bonds 
upon me and on my son. 

(Murrough comes in. Sitric goes out 
quickly, hiding the letters) 

Murrough: Are you giving advice to the Queen, 
Maelmora, as you gave it to me a while ago? 
I am ashamed that you vexed me then, but she 
seems twenty times more vexed. 

Maelmora: It is the Queen that is giving ad- 
vice to me. It may be better for you if I do not 
take it. 

Murrough: I am no good at guessing riddles. 
But if there is some threat in your voice I will 
answer it. 

Maelmora: Have a care now. You may thank 
the four bones of yotir father I did not answer 
you a while ago. 

Gormleith: What was it he said to vex you? 

Murrough: I said the King of Leinster was 
well able to give advice. I said it was good 
advice he gave his comrades, the Danes, the day 
they ran from us like scared sheep at Glen- 
mama. 

Maelmora: It may happen us yet to meet in 
another battle, where it is not my men but your 
own men that will run like scattered sheep. 

Murrough: When that battle is at hand, King, 
see that there is a good yew-tree near by, a tree 



Kincora 147 

where you can hide wliile your men are running 
as you hid yourself at Glenmama. 

Maelmora: {Half drawing sword,) I will not 
lay a hand on you in this house; my answer 
will be in some place of battle. 

Murrough: That answering will not be sooner 
than I wish it. 

Gormleith: Its day will come sooner than you 
think. 

Murrough: No, our ill-wishers do not come out 
against us now, they only plot and plan. 

Gormleith: They are coming out now. They 
are coming to make their attack on you. 

Murrough: I do not think so ; they are afraid. 

Gormleith: No, they are not afraid; you will 
not stand against them this time. They will sweep 
you and your race out of Ireland. 

Murrough: Where are these great men coming 
from? Will the grass stalks tirni to be an army? 

Gormleith: I am giving you a last warning. 
They are on the sea now. The north wind is 
bringing them to Clontarf. 

Murrough: That is the foolish talk of women 
in a parlour. Sitric would bring his men out 
from Dublin, they would have a rough landing 
at Clontarf. Where is Sitric? He has stolen 
away. Where is he gone? 

Gormleith: Sitric is young, he is hardy; he 
would not sit down and count his beads through 



14^ Kincora 

his life. The old have worn out their time, from 
this out is it for you and Sitric to strike the ball. 

Maelmora: This is no place for us now. Come 
away, Gormleith, out of this. 

Murrough: (Standing at the door.) No one 
must leave this till the King comes. (Calls out.) 
Here, men, call in the King — dhurry, there is 
trouble before him — ^tell him to make no delay. 

Gormleith: I would not have crept out of the 
house secretly. I will tell him myself what I have 
done. 

Murrough: You will not tell him of your 
treachery, and I that am not yoiu* friend will 
not tell him. I have no mind to scald my 
father's heart. 

Brian: {Coming in.) What is this call of 
trouble? 

Murrough: The armies of the Gall are on their 
way to Ireland. 

Brian: Are you sure of what you say? 

Murrough: I have it from those that knov/. 
It is certain. 

Brian: The army is ready, we are well pre- 
pared. Call in our advisers; I will see what 
is best to do. Come here to me, Gormleith, 
it is yotu" hour now, you are very wary in 
giving advice and very brave in danger. Stay 
here beside me now while we make oiu* plans. 

Gormleith: I cannot — I do not know what to 



Kincora 149 

say — you made me angry. You must not trust 
me. 

Brian: My heart has trusted you since we 
were Hnked in marriage, many long days ago. 
Sit here as you used — take that pen and mark 
down the orders for our troops. {Takes pen 
and gives it to her,) 

Gormleith: {Throwingit from her.) I cannot — 
oh, it must be stopped — they must be turned 
back — it is not too late — help me, Maelmora, 
Sitric must do as I bid him. Call him back 
— go after him, he must obey me — no, I will 
go myself. I will drag him back. Yes, Brian, 
you may trust me — I will stop him, everything 
will ttun out well. {She is going to the door 
when Malachi appears in it,) Who is that? 
Malachi! 

Malachi: {Putting up his hand,) Stop where 
you are. I have a thing to say to the High 
King. 

Gormleith: Oh, are you come for my destruc- 
tion at the last? 

Malachi: I have heavy news for you, Brian. 
There is danger on its way towards us. 

Brian: I got news of it on the minute. You 
are in time to help us. We are on the one side, 
we have had such dangers before this. 

Malachi: Are you very sure there are no 
traitors here to make o\u* enemies welcome? 



150 Kincora 

Brian: There should surely be some weighty 
reason urging you to give out such a word. 

Malachi: I would sooner some other one would 
ask, is there treachery within the very lintel 
of this door? 

Brian: Maelmora, have you any answer to 
give to that? 

Maelmora: The time Murrough called to you, 
it was to tell what I was after telling him. 

Brian: Murrough would not screen any traitor 
at all, whoever it might happen to be. 

Murrough: Maelmora is in it — ^and 

Brian: And what other one? 

Murrough: I am loth to say it. It is best 
for you to question her yourself. 

Brian: Question her? Who is there to ques- 
tion? There is no woman here but the Queen. 

Gormleith: Make an end of it, Murrough. 
Tell out what he is asking you to tell. 

Murrough: Queen Gormleith is giving her own 
welcome to the Danes. 

Brian: That is not possible, that is some great 
mistake. Tell him, Gormleith, it is a mistake and 
a lie. 

Gormleith: He has told you no lie. The thing 
he has said is true. 

Brian: It is not true. You are taking this 
thing on your own head with some thought of 
saving your son. 



Kincora 151 

Gormleith: Ask King Malachi. He knows me, 
he made prophecies, he will tell you. I would 
sooner you to know the truth, and the end to 
have come and the finish. Tell it out, Malachi, 
I make no defence, and tell him along with that 
what wages are my due. 

Malachi: I am done with giving judgments 
this long time. It is God is the rightful 
judge. 

Gormleith: I did it and I did not do it, Brian — 
I was not entirely to blame. I thought myself 
to be wise, to drag things here and there, to 
do some great thing, moving men with big 
words. Oh, I have pulled down the rafters of 
the roof that sheltered me! {She is putting out 
her hand to Brian hut Malachi goes between.) 

Brian: Let her go, let no one lay a hand on 
her. And may God have mercy on every woman's 
vain changing heart! 

Gormleith: Do not say that, Brian, do not 
think it, it was not my heart that changed, it 
was anger and jealousy made me crazy at the 
time. 

(Brian^s head has sunk in his hands. Mal- 
achi gently leads her towards the door.) 

Malachi: Go now as he has given you leave. 
Go free, if freedom can profit you, a broken 
woman, a spoiled queen, travelling the roads of 
the world. God is the judge. You were maybe 



152 Kincora 

misled, made use of, others putting it on you 
that you yourself were doing all. 

Gormleith: No, Malachi, I did my own part, 
I have no mind to deny or to hide my own 
share in it at all. You promised Brian I would 
turn my hand against him, and I thought that a 
thing was not possible, and I did turn it against 
him in the end. Listen now to this. Brodar of 
Manannan's Island would not give his aid to 
the Danes unless I promised him myself, and I 
promised it. I put my own hand to that. Sigurd, 
Earl of Orkney, asked the same promise, and I 
gave it. I did not leave any lie on you at all 
— ^yoiur words have come around. There will be 
fighting for me yet! Fighting for me and about 
me. Are you satisfied now, Malachi of the 
foretellings? 

Malachi: Look at the work you have done. 
{He points to Brian.) Go out and hang your 
head for shame. The man that was steady and 
strong is broken. It is hardly he will reach to the 
battle. 

Gormleith: No fear, no fear, Brian will reach 
to the battle. There is no fear at all of him 
not doing that. It is not Brian would wish to 
die the death of a man that is lessening and stiff- 
ening, the time he grows attentive to his bed, 
but of a winner that is merry and shouting, the 
time his enemies are put down. I was maybe 



Kincora 153 

a right wife for him. A right wife, a lucky 
wife, in spite of all ! {Goes out.) 

Malachi: {Going to Brian and putting hand 
on his shoulder,) Lift up your head, Brian. 

Brian: The blame is on me. It is I myself 
have betrayed my people. War, war, keening 
and treachery, Ireland red again, red and stained 
through and through — trouble and treachery and 
war. 

Malachi: Make ready your orders for the 
army. 

Brian: Is all ready for the Queen's journey? 
Give her the horses from Connacht. 

Malachi: Listen to what I say, we must send 
messengers. 

Brian: The speckled horses, she liked them 
best, and the carved chariot from the north. 

Malachi: Attend to what I am saying. 

Brian: But who was it, who was it, that 
called in the Gall? 

Malachi: I cannot rouse him. It is no wonder. 
That treachery was too hard a blow. 

{Murrough comes in with standard in hand 
and stands on threshold. Spears and 
banners appear at window. War march 
is played.) 

Brian: {Standing up.) But what did the dream 
mean? What did Aoibhell mean? She promised 
me lasting peace, lasting peace; she told it to me 



154 Kincora 

in my dream. {He walks towards door.) What 
did she mean? Is there no truth? Is every one 
treacherous? {He comes face to face with Murrough 
and stands still.) 

Murrough: The army is ready, we must lead 
it to meet the Danes at Clontarf . 

Brian: {Standing very strong and straight.) 
Clontarf? Now I know what Aoibhell meant. 
She said it was at Clontarf I would find peace. 
That is well. My place is ready among the 
generations; Cathal, son of Aedh, Core, son of 
Anluan, Lorcan, son of Luchta, Mahon, son of 
Cennedigh, all the race of Lugaidh reigned in this 
place, and went out of this door for the last time ; 
and the traitors that betrayed them, and the 
women they loved. Give me my sword. {Malachi 
takes it down and gives it to him.) It has another 
battle to win. 

Curtain 



DERVORGILLA 



155 






Persons 
Dervorgilla . . once queen of breffny 

Flann an old servant 

Mona HIS wife 

Owen A YOUNG man 

Other Young Men 

Mamie A GIRL 

Other Girls 

A Wandering Songmaker 

Time — 1193. Scene, outside the Abbey of 
Mellifont, near Drogheda. 



156 



Scene : A green lawn outside a garden wall. 
Flann is arranging a chair with cloaks and 
cushions. Mona standing beside him. 

Mona: Put a cloak there on the ground, Flann. 
It would not serve the lady, the damp of the 
earth to be rising up about her feet. 

Flann: What ails her coming abroad at all, 
and the length of time she never asked to come 
outside the walls? 

Mona: The yotmg lads wanting to get prizes 
and to show off at their sports, it is that enticed 
her entirely. More sports there will be in it to-day 
than the most of them saw in their lifetime. 

Flann: Fighting and killings and robbery, that 
is the sport they were brought up to, and that is 
all the sport that was in it for the last twoscore 
years. 

Mona: The Lord be with the good old times, 
when a woman suckling her child would be safe 
crossing Ireland from sea to sea! No wonder our 
own poor lady to be vexed and torn in the night- 
time. It seemed to me she had a very shook 
appearance this morning. 

157 



158 Dervorgilla 

Flann: There is no occasion for her to be fret- 
ting or lonesome, and the way her name is up 
through the whole of the province. 

Mona: Why would n't it be up, after the way 
she fed old and yotmg through the bad times, 
giving means and cattle to those the English 
had robbed. 

Flann: It is royal she is in giving as in race. 
Look at all the weight of gold the Abbey got from 
her, and the golden vessels upon the high altar. 

Mona: No wonder the people to be saying she 
will surely get the name of a saint; the darling 
queen-woman of the Abbey of Mellifont. 

Flann: God grant it, God grant it. We have 
her secret well kept so far as this. It would be 
a queer thing if it would not be kept to the end. 

(Shouts are heard.) 

Mona: It is the lads shouting for their own 
champions that are after beating the men of 
Assaroe. 

(Owen and other lads come in.) 

Owen: Is the lady herself coming out, Flann? 
Has she got good prizes in her hand? 

Flann: Good and too good. The lady is too 
much bothered with the whole of you, stretching 
out her hand to you the way she does. 

Another lad: Show us the prizes. 

Another lad: Are they there in the basket, 
Flann? Give them over here to me. 



Dervorgilla 159 

Flann: Let you behave yourselves now and 
have manners, or you will get nothing at 
all. 

Owen: It is little we would get if you had the 

giving of it, Flann! Here, Mamie, come and see 

the grand things Flann is keeping under his cloak ! 

(They all hustle Flann, Mamie runs in,) 

Mamie: Do you see what is there beyond? 
Beyond upon the hill? 

Owen: A troop of men on horses. I suppose 
it is to race the horses they are come. 

Mamie: It is not, it is not; but a troop of 
English soldiers they are. Bows they have and 
swords. I am in dread of them. I went hiding 
in the scrub as they passed. Is there any fear, 
Flann, they will be coming to this place? 

Flann: Sure the lady herself is coming 
outside the gate. Would I let her do that, 
there to be danger in it? I tell you the place 
she is, is as safe as a burrow under rocks. 

Mona: Let you stop your chat. Here she 
is now, coming to the gate. 

Mamie: I would never be in dread where 
she is. There are some say she has power from 
beyond the world, for there is no one knows 
her name or her race. 

Flann: Whisht, the whole of ye! 

(They stand back and Dervorgilla comes in 
leaning upon her stick. Flann and 



i6o Dervorgilla 

Mona lead her to her chair and she 
stands for a moment.) 

Dervorgilla: God save you, children. 

All: God save you, lady. 

Dervorgilla : His blessing be upon you, and my 
blessing, and the blessing of the summer time. 
Let me see that the doings of the great men are 
not forgotten, and that you can be as good 
rimners, and as good hurlers, and as good at 
hitting the mark, as your old fathers were. 

All: We will, we will. 

Owen: You will be proud, lady, to see 
what the men of Ulster can do against the men 
of Leinster and of Meath. 

Dervorgilla : That is so, I will be proud. For 
though I am an old woman given to praying, 
I can take pride yet in strength of body and 
readiness of hand; for I saw such things long 
ago in kings' houses. 

Owen : There is no fear of us at all ! We will 

not be put down; we will gain the day! Come 

on, lads, some of the sports might be over. Come 

along, Mamie, and be looking at us from the 

bank of the embroiderers. {They go out.) 

Dervorgilla: It is many years since we had 
a day like this of sport and of mirth-making. It 
seems as if those were wrong who said the 
English would always bring trouble on us; there 
may be a good end to the story after all. 



Dervorgilla i6i 

Flann: There will be a good end, to be 
sure. A bad behaved race the people of this 
country are. It is the strong hand of the 
English is the best thing to be over them. 

Dervorgilla : England is a rich, powerful coun- 
try to be joined to. 

Flann: We should surely grow rich ourselves 
joined with her, the same as a girl of the ducks 
and the ashes that would be married to a 
great lord's son. 

Dervorgilla: I can go in peace if I know I 
have left peace after me, and content, but some- 
times I am afraid. I had a dream last night, 
a troublesome dream — What is that ? I hear a cry. 
(Mamie runs in with a dead bird.) 

Mamie: Oh, look, lady, it is a crane. It is 
dead, they have shot it ! 

Dervorgilla: The fowlers should have spared 
all life on a day of mirth like this. 

Mamie: It was one of the English bowmen; 
he shot it in the air. It fell at my feet. It died 
there at my feet. 

Dervorgilla: It vexes me, that to have hap- 
pened on such a day as this. 

Flann: Get out of that now, Mamie. You 
should have more sense than to be bringing in a 
thing of the kind. Look now, there has blood 
dropped upon the lady's cloak. Bring it out 
of this and throw it in some place where it will 

zx 



i62 Dervorgilla 

be in no one's way. I wonder at you annoying 
the lady, and the way she is spending her 
means upon you all. {Mamie goes out.) 

Dervorgilla: {Looking at cloak which Mona is 
wiping.) It has brought to my mind other blood 
that was spilled, and that I, I myself, have to 
answer for. 

Flann: You think entirely too much of it, 
lady, taking on yourself the weight of the bringing 
in of the English. It was the quarrelling of the 
provinces with one another brought them in. 

Dervorgilla: No, no. It was I brought them 
in for good or for evil, by my own sin and the 
wars that were stirred up for my sake. 

Flann: No, but it was in the prophecies that 
they would come. Did n't Blessed Caillen see 
them coming over the sea, and he at the brink of 
death waiting for the angels of God? There is no 
use at all trying to go against the prophecies. 

Dervorgilla: You are always trying to flatter 
and to comfort me, but surely I brought 
trouble upon Ireland, as well as on all I had 
to do with. Diarmuid, King of Leinster, that 
was my lover, perished like a beast fallen by the 
roadside, without sacrament, without repentance. 
It was I brought that curse upon him. 

Flann: {Mutters.) It was he himself earned 
that curse; God knows he earned it well. 

Dervorgilla: Was it not I brought the curse upon 



Dervorgilla 163 

O'Rourke, King of Breffny, the husband I left 
and betrayed? The head I made bow with shame 
was struck off and sent to the EngHsh King. 
The body I forsook was himg on the walls 
shamefully, by the feet, Hke a calf after slaughter. 
It is certain there is a curse on all that have 
to do with me. What I have done can never 
be undone. How can I be certain of the forgive- 
ness of God? 

Mona: Be easy now. Who would be forgiven 
if you would not be forgiven? Sure the Lord has 
seen your prayers and your crying, and your great 
giving and your holy life. 

Dervorgilla: Four years I have lived and four- 
score, and for half my life I ran my own way, 
and through the other half of my life I have paid 
the penalty. For every day or night of pride or 
of pleasure, I have spent a day and a night of 
prayer and of pain. Will not that bring forgive- 
ness? Is not that paying the penalty? 

Mona: Indeed and surely you have made it 
up with God. Surely you are forgiven and well 
forgiven! It is God Himself will open to you 
the gate of heaven! 

[Dervorgilla: But the people, the people; will 
they ever forgive what I have done! 

Mona: They have enough to do to be mind- 
ing themselves. What call would they have to 
go draw it down upon you at all? 



164 Dervorgilla 

Dervorgilla: I dreamt last night that the 
people knew me, that they knew my story and 
my sin; that they knew it was for my sake the 
wars were stirred up and the Gall brought into 
Ireland. They seemed to curse and to threaten 
me. They stooped like this, to take up stones 
to throw at me, knowing me at last to be 
Dervorgilla! 

{A voice is heard singing.) 

Mona: Whist ! Listen. 

Dervorgilla: What is that? Who is that 
coming? 

Flann: A beggar — some wandering lad. He 
has a great appearance of poverty. Will I go 
get something for him? There is no comfort 
at all comforts you like giving to the poor. 
Look now the way his shoes are broken! 

Dervorgilla: I can help the poor still. God 
gives me leave to do that. Thank God I have 
leave yet to be a giver of gifts. Go bring me 
shoes for him, and a cloak, and some silver money. 

Flann: Where is the use spoiling him with silver ? 

Shoes are enough, shoes are enough. What call 

has a lad of his age to go begging; that is a trade 

of life should be left to give employment to the old. 

(He goes out. A ragged lad comes in. He is 

carrying a sort of rough fiddle.) 

Dervorgilla: Where do you come from, boy? 

Songmaker: From the province of Coimacht 



Dervorgilla 165 

I am come. Connacht yesterday, Armagh to- 
morrow. To-day it is Mellifont has got hold of 
me. (Sings) — 

Yesterday travelling Connacht, 

Drogheda has me to-day; 
My back to the empty pockets, 

My face to the place will pay! 

Dervorgilla: You are young to be wandering. 

Songmaker: Where would I be stopping? This 
day five year the thatch I was reared under was 
burned by the Gall, and all I had of kindred 
scattered. I rambled Ireland since that time, just 
roving aroimd. (Sings) — 

Just roving around 

To my grief and my sorrow, 
Under a rock to-day, 

Under a bush to-morrow. 

It will be a long time till the Pope of Rome will 
get a hearth tax on my account, from the tax- 
gatherers of the King of England. 

Dervorgilla: Have you no trade that you can 
follow? 

Songmaker: The best, the best. I have in 
me the makings of a poet — and a good poet — 
according to the treatment I would be given — 
one day sweet, another day sour. (Sings) — 



1 66 Dervorgilla 

Syrupy sweet to-day, 

Sour as sloes to-morrow; 
Sweet to the lads that pay, 

Sour to the lads that borrow! 

It is a sweet poem I would wish to be making 
in this grand place. 

Dervorgilla: You have no right to the name of 
a poet; you have not learned it in the schools. 

Songmaker: I did learn it well. Was n't my 
grandfather a poet, and I reared up by him on 
the brink of a running stream? I know the rules 
well. Believe me, the mensuration of verses is 
a very ticklish thing. 

Dervorgilla: The old poets had knowledge 
from the well of wisdom. They could tell and 
foretell many things. 

Songmaker: It is often the people far and near 
would draw to my grandfather to question him. 
Let them come to him, sick or sotir, he had an 
answer for all of them, or a cure. 

Dervorgilla: Did you ever hear him say to 
any one that asked him, if a sin once committed 
could be forgiven? 

Songmaker: It wants no poet's knowledge to 
know that. Can a sin be forgiven, is it? Why 
not, or who would people heaven? 

Dervorgilla: But — did you ever hear him say 
if it can be imdone? Can a wrong once done 



Dervorgilla 167 

ever be undone? Suppose there was some person 
who had done a great wrong, had brought, maybe, 
a bad neighbour into the house, or a hard stranger 
in among kindred — it might be a race, an army 
into a country. Could that person ever gain 
forgiveness, praying and sorrowing? 

Songmaker: Well, God is good. But to bring 
in a bad neighbour is a hard thing to get over. It 
was a bad neighbour in the next house, drove St. 
Patrick back from Rome to Ireland. 

Dervorgilla: But if that neighbour, that 
stranger, that race, should turn kind and honest, 
or could be sent back, and all be as before, would 
not forgiveness be gained by that? 

Songmaker: Wait, now, till I think. There 
was something my grandfather, God rest his soul, 
used to be saying. He had great wisdom, I tell 
you, being silly-like, and blind. Wait, now, till 
I see can I sound it out right. Talking, the 
neighbours were, about St. Martin's mitten. It 
was St. Martin made a throw of his mitten at 
the mice one time they had him annoyed, nib- 
bling at the oatenmeal in the mill; and, in the 
throwing, it turned to be a cat, and scattered 
them. That was the first cat that ever was in 
Ireland. 

Mona: To be sure; to be sure; so it was. St. 
Martin's mitten was the first cat. Everybody 
knows that. 



i68 Dervorgilla 

Songmaker: But it is what my grandfather 
said, that if all the saints in Ireland had wished 
it, and if St. Martin himself had wished it 
along with them, it would fail them to have 
turned that cat to be a mitten again, or the 
English to be quiet neighbours again, furry and 
innocent, and having no claws! 

Flann: {Bringing cloak and shoes.) Give 
thanks now to the lady that is giving you more 
than you deserve. {Hands him the things and 
some money.) 

Songmaker: My blessing down upon you, lady, 
whoever you are. Faith, you have a strong 
pocket ! The house you are in is no empty house, 
or any bad house at all. {He sits down on the 
ground and begins to lace on shoes, singing:) 

I am after being given two grand steppers. 
Matching one another like two swallows on 
the wind. 
Made from the skin of the Brown Bull of 
Cuailgne. 
Or the cow Argus minded, he that was not 
blind. 

It *s the roads of the world will be proud to see 
them. 
It *s a great ornament they will be, far and 
near; 



Dervorgilla 169 

She that gave them never learned to be a 
niggard, 
Though the Gall are among us this four 
and twenty year! 

{Owen, Mamief and the rest run in,) 

Owen: I have the prize won ! I was best over 
the leaps. I have taken the sway! 

Mamie: My worked border was the best! 
Every one gave in to that ! 

Another Lad: I leaped very high; I leaped as 
high as that! 

Another: It was I won at the hurley! I 
took the goal from the men of Meath! 

Dervorgilla: You have all done well. I am 
proud of you, children. I can give you all prizes. 
Flann, give me the prizes. {He hands them to 
her and she gives them one hy one.) Here, Mamie, 
is a necklace from the Eastern world. You 
have earned it well by your worked border. 
Make the borders of your house beautiful. Keep 
within its borders all God has given you in 
charge. {To Owen.) Here is a silver cup. {To 
another.) Here is a cloak with a brooch. {To 
another.) Here, you are the yoimgest, you must 
have a prize. Take this hurl, this silver ball. 
Practice with them well and you will be first yet. 
{They all stoop and kiss her hand as she gives 
the presents.) 



170 Dervorgilla 

Flann: Give a good shout now for the lady. 
{They all shout, the singer joins.) 

Owen: Who is that? A stranger? He has not 
the look of our own people. Is he come to make 
sport for us? 

Dervorgilla: He is a maker of songs. He has 
the sweet voice of the Connacht men. They 
have the soft sea mist in their mouths. 

Owen: Give out a song now, till we *11 hear 
what you can do. 

Songmaker: Give me the key so. There can 
be no singing without a key. 

Owen: What do you call a key? 

Songmaker: Three keys there are; you should 
know that. It is only love or drink or friendship 
can unlock a song. 

Dervorgilla: Give him a cup of wine. 

Flann: Will nothing do him but wine? Wine 
that is too good and too strong. {Gives him a cup, 
Songmaker drinks.) 

Songmaker: What will you have now for a 
song? Destructions, cattle preys, courtships, 
feats of battle? 

Owen: No, no ; we are tired of those. 

Songmaker: Well, 1 11 rhyme you out a verse 
about Finn and the Danish wedding. 

Owen: Those old songs of Finn and his men 
are only for winter nights, and the feet among 
the sods. Give us out a new song. 



Dervorgilla 171 

Songmaker: It is best keep to the old ones. The 
old ones are merry, but the new ones are sorrowful. 

Owen: The sorrowful songs are sometimes the 
best. They tell of the death of the big men and 
of the quarrelling of kings. 

Songmaker: Well, if it is a sorrowful song you 
want, it is easy to find it, for there was not made 
these forty years any song or any story in 
Ireland that was not sorrowful. And if it is 
the quarrellings of kings you want, I will tell 
you of a quarrelling brought such trouble into 
Ireland, that if a grain of it could be blown 
through a pipe in amongst the angels of heaven, it 
would bring a dark mist over their faces. {Rocks 
himself.) I tell you, that if the half of all the 
tears, shed through that quarrelling, could be 
sent through a pipe into hell, the flames would 
be put out, and the hearth of it black-flooded 
with otters! 

Owen: That must be the story of the coming 
of the Gall into Ireland. 

Flann: That trouble is surely lessening. There 
are no more killings. It is best to put away old 
griefs out of mind. Think now of some other 
thing. Something happened in Spain or in France. 

Dervorgilla: Do not meddle with him, Flann. 
It is not the telling of the story makes the story. 
Let me hear what is the common voice. 
(Songmaker sings:) 



172 Dervorgilla 

It is pitiful and sharp to-day are the wounds 

of Ireland, 
From Galway of white flaggy stones to Cork of 

the white strand; 
The branches that were full of leaves and honey 

on the leaves 
Are torn and stripped and shortened by the 

stranger to our grief. 

It is long, O Royal Ireland, you were mannerly 

and kind, 
A nursing mother to your sons, fair, hospitable, 

wise; 
Now you are wine spilled from a cup beneath 

the strangers' feet, 
The English-speaking troop to-day have trodden 

down our wheat. 

The wild white fawn has lost the shape was 
comely in the wood. 

Since the foreign crow came nesting in the yew- 
tree overhead. 

Since the red East wind brought to our hurt 
the troop of foreign rogues. 

We are drifted like the wretched fur of a cat upon 
a bog! 

Flann: Where is the use of yelping and yowl- 
ing like a hound that has lost the pack? Get 



Dervorgilla 173 

out of this, if that screeching of a banshee is 
all that you can do. 

Dervorgilla: I have given him leave to sing 
his songs. Let him travel his own road. Let 
him take his own way. 

Songmaker: It is hard for me to tell my story 
and that one not giving me leave to tell it. 
There must be a preparation for everything and 
a beginning. Would n't you hear the wind mak- 
ing its cry about the house before you would 
hear the hammering of the rain upon the stones? 
Give me time now, and I will give out the story 
of a man that has left a name will never be for- 
gotten here, and that is Diarmuid MacMurrough, 
King of Leinster, that first called the English 
into Ireland. (Sings:) 

Through Diarmuid *s bad sway we are wasted 

to-day, 
It was he brought away the Queen of Breffny ; 
And when O'Rourke raised Connacht against 

him, 
Gave the English pay to come to Ireland. 

It were better for all that are under the Gall, 
If death made a call and he in the cradle; 
Bind him down very strong and bruise him 

long. 
The way he can wrong us no more for ever. 



174 Dervorgilla 

His great body is down under the stone 
Chased by the hounds were before the world ; 
It was Peter^s own frown closed the door before 

him, 
It is Diarmuid is bound in cold Hell for ever! 

Dervorgilla: That is enough, that is enough! 
Why should you heap up blame upon one that 
is ?dead? King Diarmuid's lips are closed now 
with clay. It is a shameful thing, a cowardly 
thing, to make attacks upon a man that cannot 
answer. Are you not satisfied to let God be 
the judge? 

Songmaker: I had no intention to give offence. 
To dispraise Diarmuid and the English, I thought 
that would give satisfaction in this place, the 
same as it does in Connacht. 

Dervorgilla: Those that have a good heart and 
a high nature try to find excuses for the dead. 

Songmaker: So they would, so they would. 
It is finding excuses we should be for the dead. 
There is an excuse for every one; the Blessed 
Mother knows that, and she sitting every Sat- 
urday as the attorney for poor souls. Making 
out a case for them she does be. 

Dervorgilla: There is no one who might not 
be freed from blame, if his case and what led to 
his wrongdoing were put down. 

Songmaker: I '11 make out a case for him. I 



Dervorgilla 175 

can tell out what led King Diarmuid into his sin 
and his treachery; and that is the thing brings 
mostly all mischief into the world, the change- 
able wagging nature of a woman. {Sings:) 

He cares little for life, puts trust in a wife, 
It is long it is known they go with the wind ; 
A queer thing a woman was joined with 

O'Rourke 
To show herself kind to a pet from Leinster. 

The rat in the larder, the fire in the thatch, 
The guest to be fattening, the children famished ; 
If *t was Diarmuid's call that brought in the 

Gall, 
Let the weight of it fall upon Dervorgilla! 

{Dervorgilla tries to rise and cannot. Mona 

supports her, Flann offers her wine. 

She lies back as if faint. They attend 

to her, their backs to the rest. The singer 

crosses to the young men, who give him 

money.) 

Mamie: I often heard of Dervorgilla that left 

the King of Breffny for Diarmuid, and started the 

war, but I never heard what happened to her 

after. 

Owen: There is no one knows that. Some say 
King Roderick put her under locks in a cell at 
Clonmacnoise. 



176 Dervorgilla 

Songmaker: More likely she hanged herself, 
after setting the whole of the country in an uproar. 

Owen: If she did they had a right to bury her 
with a hound on her false heart, the same as 
Diarmuid himself was buried. 

Songmaker: No, but Diarmuid's father was 
buried with the hoimd. Excuse or no excuse, a 
bad race they are, a bad race. 

Flann: {To Songmaker.) Quit off now out of 
this place before I will make you quit it. Take 
yourself and your rags and your venomous 
tongue out of this. 

Songmaker: Let you leave me alone. Is that 
the way you are laying hands upon a poet? 

Dervorgilla: Leave him go, Flann. You are 
judging him now. God is the Judge; let him go. 

Songmaker: Look at the way you have me tore ! 
It is where I *11 go on to that troop of English 
on the hill beyond. I *11 sound my songs for 
them. I will get better treatment from them 
itself, than I am getting from you. If it was n't 
for respect for the lady, it *s a great overthrow I 'd 
make of you. I '11 go on to the English. {He 
goes off, singing as he goes,) 

Since the Gall have the sway, it 's for them I will 

play 
There 's none would lay blame on a boy that *s 

a beggar, 



Dervorgilla 177 

But a queer thing a woman was joined to 

O'Rourke, 
To show herself kind to a fox from Leinster! 

Owen: The English look to be friendly enough. 
They are drinking beer from the barrels. They 
are cheering the horses that go over the bank. 
Come along, boys, and see the big leaps. 

Mamie: Take care now, it would not be safe 
to go near the bowmen. Did n't you see the way 
they made an end of that crane a while ago? 

Owen: Flann said they would do no harm. I 
would like well to get a near view of the big bows. 
Come along, Mamie. 

Mamie: I will not. I will go into the garden 
of the Abbey. 

{She goes in through gate, Owen and young 
men go out,) 

Dervorgilla: {Raising herself up.) Oh, my sin, 
my sin has come upon my head! Why did I 
come out from the Abbey walls? A cell is the 
only fitting place for me! I should never have 
come out into the light of the day! 

Flann: Ah, what does it signify? What is 
it all but a vagabond's song that was bom in a 
minute, and will vanish away like a wisp of smoke. 

Dervorgilla: The dream of the night was true. 
It is coming true. My sin is remembered — I 
shall be known — I saw it all — they stooped to pick 
xa 



178 Dervorgilla 

up stones — there was no forgiveness when they 
knew me to be Dervorgilla ! 

Flann: That is a thing they will never know 
and that they have no way to know. Sure in 
the Abbey itself there is no one knows it outside 
the Order. 

Dervorgilla: It will be discovered, some one 
will see me. 

Flann: Ah, there are few living in any place 
that ever saw you in the old days. And if 
they should see you now itself, how would they 
know those holy withered cheeks to belong to 
the lovely lady that set kings fighting in her bloom? 
And many happenings have happened since then, 
and it is likely the Queen of Breffny is forgotten. 
Sure you heard them saying that Dervorgilla 
is dead. 

Dervorgilla: I will go in. Bring me back into 
the shelter of the walls. 

Flann: It might be best. There will be no 
drimken poets and schemers of the sort going in 
there to annoy you. It is too open-handed you 
are to them all, that is what makes them so 
stubborn and so high-minded. Gather up the 
pillows, Mona, till we'll bring the lady in. 

Mona: It *s best, it 's best. Ah, don't be 
fretting, dear. There is no one on earth knows 
your secret and your name but myself, that 
was reared with you, and this man that is my 



Dervorgilla 179 

own comrade. And you know well, and I swear 
to you, the both of us would be dragged through 
briars, and ground under millstones, before we 
would consent to say out your name to any 
person at all. I would sooner my tongue to be 
turned to a stone here and now, than you to 
be imeasy the way you are. 

Dervorgilla: There is no hiding it, no hiding 
it. Dreams come true. Who was there to-day 
to tell it, and that beggar told the story. He 
will be singing it from troop to troop. The 
English will hear it, the rimners will hear it, it 
will be blazed before night through the provinces, 
it will set them thinking of me, and talking. 

Flann: The devil skelp him! It would be 
no harm at all to come from behind and give him 
a tip of a hurl on the head to quiet his impudence 
and his talk. There is strength in my hand yet, 
and weight in my stick. 

Dervorgilla: No, no, I will not have any one 
hurt for my sake. I will have no other blood 
upon my head. But follow him, Flann. Go 
after him and put him under bonds to go away, 
to leave the province, to give up his singing. 
Give him money, all this money, that he may 
live in some far-away place, without singing and 
wandering. 

Flann: {Taking the purse.) I will do that. 
Wait three minutes and I '11 be coming back 



i8o Dervorgilla 

to bring you within the walls. I '11 put him under 
heavy oaths to quit this, to go do his croaking 
with the crows of Scotland. That they may make 
an end of him with their beaks, and be pecking 
the eyes out of him, and lining their nests with 
every hair of his head ! {He goes off.) 

Dervorgilla: It is of no use, dreams cannot 
lie, my punishment must come. I knew it all 
the time, even within the walls. I tried to make 
it up with good works. It was of no use, my 
name is in men's mouths. 

Mona: What signifies one beggar's song? It 
is not on you the blame should be laid. It was 
not you went to Diarmuid MacMurrough. It 
was not you followed after him to Leinster. 
It was he came and brought you away. There 
are many say it was by force. There are many 
that are saying that. That is the way it will be 
written in the histories. 

Dervorgilla: If Diarmuid MacMurrough had 
taken me by force, do you think I would have 
lived with him for one day only? My hands 
were strong then. I had my courage then. I 
was free to make an end of myself or of him. 
Will the generations think better of me, thinking 
me to have been taken as a prey, like the 
Connacht hag's basket, or the Munster hag's 
speckled cow? Does the marten that is torn from 
the woods lull itself in its master's arms? 



Dervorgilla i8i 

Mona: Maybe so, maybe so. I used to be 
better pleased myself hearing them say it, than 
putting the blame on yourself of leaving O'Rourke. 

Dervorgilla: O'Rourke was a good man, and a 
brave man, and a kinder man than Diarmuid, 
but it was with Diarmuid my heart was. It is 
to him I was promised before ever I saw O'Rourke, 
and I loved him better than ever my own lord, and 
he me also, and this was long! I loved him, I 
loved him ! Why did they promise me to him and 
break the promise? Why was every one against 
him then and always, every one against Diarmuid? 
Why must they be throwing and ever-throwing 
sharp reproaches upon his name? Had a man 
loved by a king's daughter nothing in him to love? 
A man great of body, hardy in fight, hoarse with 
shouts of battle. He had liefer be dreaded than 
loved! It was he cast down the great, it was 
the dumb poor he served! Every proud man 
against him and he against every proud man. 
Oh, Diarmuid, I did not dread you. It was I 
myself led you astray! Let the curse and the 
vengeance fall upon me and me only, for the great 
wrong and the treachery done by both of us to 
Ireland ! 

(A lotcd cry is heard. Both look towards 
where it comes from.) 

Mona: Listen, listen! 

Dervorgilla: What is it? What is that cry? 



i82 Dervorgilla 

Mona: It is like the heavy shout does be 
given out over a man that has been struck down 
by his enemies. (The shout is heard nearer,) 

Dervorgilla : What is it ! 

Mona: (Looking out.) The yoimg men are 
coming back. Their heads are drooping. 

Dervorgilla: God grant no trouble may have 
fallen upon them. 

Mona: There is trouble, and heavy trouble 
upon them, sure enough. 

(Mamie comes in from garden, young men 
come in.) 

Dervorgilla: What isit, my children? What 
has happened? 

Owen: The truce has been broken. The 
wasp we thought drowsy has found its sting. 
The hand of the Gall has again been reddened. 

Mona: Tell it out, tell it out, what is it has 
happened at all? 

Owen: Get ready for the burying of Flann of 
Breffny, the lady's steward and distributor, and 
your good comrade. 

Mona: Ah ! that is foolishness. It cannot be true. 
He was here but a minute ago, standing in this spot. 

Owen: It is true. 

Dervorgilla: How did he die? Tell me all. 

Owen: He came where that Connachtman was 
doing his tricks for the English troop. They 
asked a song of him; he was going to give it 



1 



Dervorgilla 183 

out. Flann tried to bring him away. The bow- 
men had mugs of beer in their hands ; they were 
laughing at the tricks; they wanted the song. 
They called out to Flann to leave him to make 
fun for them, but Flann tried to bring him 
away. He spoke in his ear; he put his hand 
over his mouth. They were rightly vexed then, 
and one of them called out: *' There, spoil-sport, 
is a spoiling of all sport for you," and he drew 
his bow and sent an arrow through Flann*s body, 
that he fell like a stone, without a word. Then 
they turned their horses, and one of them said it was 
a pity , but another said their dinners would be spoil- 
ing in Drogheda. And so they rode away in a hurry. 

Dervorgilla: Another. Death has come upon 
another. {Holds out her hands,) Come to me, 
my poor Mona, my friend. 

Mona: Is it Flann is dead? Flann, my hus- 
band? He had a year less than I myself had. 
It was not his time to die. Who is there to 
close my own eyes now? He always said he 
would close my eyes. 

Dervorgilla: Your trouble is no greater than 
my trouble. It was for my sake and in following 
my bidding he died. 

Mona: It was the Gall killed his two brothers 
and destroyed the house and trampled down the 
field of oats. What did they want killing 
him ? Was n*t it enough to have destroyed his oats? 



1 84 Dervorgilla 

Dervorgilla: Come into the Abbey and prepare 
for him there. 

Mona: So near to the chapel, and not a priest 
to overtake him before he died. That was no 
death for a Christian man. 

Dervorgilla: Candles will be lighted, and many- 
Masses said for his soul. 

Mona: And if it was with the sword itself he 
was killed, that 's natural. His brothers were 
killed with the sword. But an arrow ! Not one 
of the family was killed with that before. That 
is not a thing you would be hearing in the ballads. 

Owen: Will you go where the body is? There 
are some that are laying it out? 

Mona: I will, I will. Bring me to my decent 
comrade ; and bring me to that singer was here. 
I will lay it upon him to make a great cursing 
to put upon the Gall, a great heavy curse upon 
all that had to do with the Gall. {She is going 
off, hut turns hack to Dervorgilla.) But it is not 
on yourself I will let them put a curse, or lay 
on you any blame at all. You know well I never 
put blame on you, or said a sharp word of you, 
the time you were in Breffny with O'Rourke, or 
the time you were in Leinster with Diarmiiid 
MacMurrough, and I myself following you from 
place to place. You know well, and the man 
that is stretched cold and dumb knows, I never 
said a hard word or an unkind word or a bad 



Dervorgilla 185 

word of you yourself, Dervorgilla. {She goes out 
babbling.) Oh, no, no; I would never do such a 
thing as that ! 

Owen: (To the others.) Dervorgilla! Oh, did 
you hear her say it is Dervorgilla? 

Dervorgilla: {Stands up with difficulty.) Since 
you were bom and before you were bom I have 
been here, kneeling and praying, kneeling and 
praying, fasting and asking forgiveness of God. 
I think my father God has forgiven me. They 
tell me my mother the Church has forgiven me. 
That old man had forgiven me, and he had stif- 
fered by the Gall. The old — the old — that old 
woman, even in her grief, she called out no word 
against me. You are young. You will surely 
forgive me, for you are young. {They are all 
silent. Then Owen comes over and lays down his 
cup at her feet^ then turns and walks slowly 
away.) It is not your hand has done this, but 
the righteous hand of God that has moved 
your hand. {Other lads lay down their gifts.) 
I take this shame for the shame in the west I 
put on O'Rourke of Breffny, and the death I 
brought upon him by the hand of the Gall. 
{The youngest boy, who has hesitated, comes and 
lays dow7i his hurl and silver ball, and goes away, 
his head drooping.) I take this reproach for the 
reproach in the east I brought upon Diarmuid, 
King of Leinster, thrusting upon him wars and 



i86 Dervorgilla 

attacks and battles, till for his defence and to 
defend Leinster, he called in the strangers that 
have devoured Ireland. {The young men have all 
gone, Mamie comes as if to lay down her gift, hut 
draws hack. Dervorgilla turns to her.) Do not 
be afraid to give back my gifts, do not separate 
yourself from your companions for my sake. 
For there is little of my life but is spent, and 
there has come upon me this day all the pain 
of the world and its anguish, seeing and knowing 
that a deed once done has no undoing, and the 
lasting trouble my unfaithftilness has brought 
upon you and your children for ever. {Mamie 
lays down her necklace and goes away sadly.) 
There is kindness in your tmkindness, not leaving 
me to go and face Michael and the Scales of Judg- 
ment wrapped in comfortable words, and the 
praises of the poor, and the lulling of psalms, but 
from the swift, unflinching, terrible judgment of 
the yoimg! {She sinks slowly to the ground hold- 
ing to the chair. The stage hegins to darken; the voice 
of the Songmaker is heard coming nearer, singing:) 

The rat in the cupboard, the fire in the lap; 
The guest to be fattening, the children fretting; 
My ciirse upon all that brought in the Gall, 
Upon Diarmuid's call, and on Dervorgilla! 

Curtain 



MUSIC FOR THE 

SONGS IN THE PLAYS 

NOTES AND CASTS 



i«7 



MUSIC FOR DERVORGILLA 



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Yesterday travelling Connacht.Drogheda has me to- 



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face to the place will pay ! 



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pay. Sour to the lads that bor - row I 

189 



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Music for Dervorgilla 



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1. I am after being given two grand steppers 

2. It's the roads of the world would be proud to see them, 



Matching one another like two swallows on the wind, 
It's a great ornament they will be, far and near ; 



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Made from the skin of the Brown Bull of Cuailgne, Or the 
She that gave them never learned to be a niggard, Tho' the 



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cow Ar - gus-mind - ed, ... he that was not blind. 
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wounds of Ire - land, From Gal - way of white 




flag-gy stones to Cork of the white strand; The 

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branch - es that were full of leaves and 



Music for Dervorgilla 



191 



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192 



Music for Dervorgilla 



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193 



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weight of it fall up - on Der - vor - gil - la ! 



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194 



Music for Dervorgilla 



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queer for a Queen to be kind in her mind, To the 



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NOTES 
GRANIA 

I THINK I turned to Grania because so many have 
written about sad, lovely Deirdre, who when overtaken 
by sorrow made no good battle at the last. Grania 
had more power of will, and for good or evil twice took 
the shaping of her life into her own hands. The riddle 
she asks us through the ages is, ''Why did I, having left 
great grey-haired Finn for comely Diarmuid, turn back 
to Finn in the end, when he had consented to Diar- 
muid's death?" And a question tempts one more 
than the beaten path of authorised history. If I 
have held but lightly to the legend, it is not because 
I do not know it, for in Gods and Fighting Men I have 
put together and rejected many versions. For the 
present play I have taken but enough of the fable on 
which to set, as on a sod of grass, the three lovers, one 
of whom had to die. I suppose it is that "fascina- 
tion of things difficult" that has tempted me to write 
a three-act play with only three characters. Yet 
where Love itself, with its shadow Jealousy, is the 
true protagonist I could not feel that more were 
needed. When I told Mr. Yeats I had but these 
three persons in the play, he said incredulously, 

195 



196 Notes 

"They must have a great deal to talk about." And 
so they have, for the talk of lovers is inexhaustible, 
being of themselves and one another. 

As to the Fianna, the Fenians, I have heard their 
story many a time from my neighbours, old men who 
have drifted into workhouses, seaweed gatherers on 
the Burren Coast, turf-cutters on Slieve Echtge, and 
the like. For though the tales that have gathered 
around that mysterious race are thought by many to 
come from the earliest days, even before the coming 
of the Aryan Celt, the people of the West have a very 
long memory. And these tales are far better remem- 
bered than those of the Red Branch, and this, it is 
suggested, is part proof of their having belonged to the 
aboriginal race. Cuchulain's bravery, and Deirdre's 
beauty "that brought the Sons of Usnach to their 
death" find their way, indeed, into the folk-poetry of 
all the provinces; but the characters of the Fianna, 
Grania*s fickleness, and Conan^s bitter tongue, and 
Oisin's gentleness to his friends and his keen wit in the 
arguments with St. Patrick, and GoU's strength, and 
Osgar*s high bravery, and Finn's wisdom, that was 
beyond that of earth, are as well known as the charac- 
teristics of any noticeable man of modern times. 

An old man I talked with on the beach beyond Kin- 
vara told me, "They were very strong in those days, 
and six or seven feet high. I was digging the potato 
garden one day about forty years ago, and down in the 
dyke the spade struck against something, and it was 
the bones of a man's foot, and it was three feet long. 
I brought away one bone of it myself, and the man 



Notes 197 

that was along with me, but we buried it after. It 
was the foot of one of those men. They had every 
one six or seven dogs, and first they would set two 
of the dogs to fight, and then they 'd fight themselves. 
And they 'd go to all countries in curraghs that were 
as strong as steamers; to Spain they went in their 
curraghs. They went across from this hill of Burren 
to Connemara one time, and the sea opened to let 
them pass. There are no men like them now; the 
Connemara men are the best, but even with them, if 
there was a crowd of them together, and you to throw 
a stick over their heads, it would hardly hit one, they 
are mostly all the one height, and no one a few inches 
taller than another." 

Another man says, "They were all strong men in 
those times ; and one time Finn and his men went over 
to Granagh to fight the men there, and it was the time 
of the harvest, and what they fought with was sheaves, 
and every one that got a blow of a sheaf got his death. 
There is one of them buried now in Fardy Whelan's 
hill, and there 's two headstones, and my father often 
measured the grave, and he said it is seven yards 
long." 

On Slieve Echtge I was told, "Oisin and Finn took 
the lead for strength, and Samson, too, he had great 
strength." "I would rather hear about the Irish 
strong men," said I. "Well, and Samson was of the 
Irish race all the world was Irish in those times, and 
he killed the Philistines, and the eyes were picked out 
of him after. He was said to be the strongest, but 
I think myself Finn MacCumhail was stronger." 



198 Notes 

And again, "It was before the flood those strong men 
lived here, Finn and Oisin and the others, and they 
lived longer than people do now, three or four hundred 
years. 

"Giants they were; Conan was twelve feet high, 
and he was the smallest. But ever since, people are 
getting smaller and smaller, and will till they come to 
the end; but they are wittier and more crafty than 
they were in the old days, for the giants were innocent 
though they were so strong." 

I hear sometimes of "a small race and dark, and 
that carried the bag," and that was probably the 
aboriginal one. "There was a low-sized race came, 
that worked the land of Ireland a long time ; they had 
their time like the others." And, "Finn was the 
last of the giants, the tall strong men. It was after that 
the Lochlannachs came to the country. They were very 
small, but they were more crafty than the giants, and 
they used to be humbugging them. One time they 
got a sack and filled it with sand, and gave it to one 
of the Fianna to put on his back to try him. But he 
lifted it up, and all he said was, ' It is grain sowed in 
February it is.'" Another says, "An old man that 
was mending the wall of the house used to be telling 
stories about the strong men of the old time; very 
small they were, about three feet high, but they were 
very strong for all that." 

Grania is often spoken of as belonging to that small 
race, as if her story had come from a very early time. 
"She was very small, only four feet. She was the 
heiress of the princes of Ireland, and that is why they 



Notes 199 

were after her." "They say Diarmuid and Grania 
were very small. They made the big cromlechs, 
there 's a slab on the one near Crusheen, sixteen men 
could n't lift, but they had their own way of doing it." 
And again, "Diarmuid and Grania were very small 
and very thick." Another says, "Grania was low- 
sized ; and people now are handsomer than the people 
of the old time, but they have n't such good talk." 

I do not know if it is because of Grania's breach of 
faith, that I never hear her spoken of with sympathy, 
and her name does not come into the songs as Deirdre's 
does. A blind piper told me, "Some say Grania was 
handsome, and some say she was ugly, there 's a say- 
ing in Irish for that." And an old basket-maker was 
scornful and said, "Many wotdd tell you Grania slept 
under the cromlechs, but I don't believe that, and 
she a king's daughter. And I don't believe she was 
handsome either. If she was, why would she have 
runaway?" 

An old woman says, "Finn had more wisdom than 
all the men in the world, but he was n't wise enough 
to put a bar on Grania. It was huts with big stones 
Grania made, that are called cromlechs now; they 
made them when they went away into the wilderness." 

And again I was told at Moycullen, near Lough 
Corrib, "As they were passing a stream, the water 
splashed on Grania, and she said * Diarmuid was never 
so near to me as that.' " 

KINCORA 

Kincora was the first historical play I wrote, and 



I 



200 Notes 

it gave me a great deal of trouble and I wrote many 
versions, for I had not enough of skill to wrestle with 
the mass of material, and I think I kept too closely to 
history. It was produced at the Abbey Theatre in 
1905 in the old printed version. This new version 
was produced in 1909. 

I hoped then and still hope that we may give a week 
or more in every year to a sequence of history plays, 
or perhaps play them at schools, that schoolboys and 
schoolgirls may have their imagination stirred about 
the people who made history, instead of knowing them 
but as names. But Brian's greatness lives always in 
the memory of the people, and Kincora is remembered 
in the song translated by Mangan from the Irish of 
one of Brian's own household: 

Oh, where, Kincora, is Brian the great? And where is 

the beauty that once was thine ? 
Oh, where are the princes and nobles that sat at the 

feast in thy halls and drank the red wine? 

• • • • • • • 

I am MacLiag and my home is on the lake; thither 
often to that palace whose beauty is dead 

Came Brian to ask me and I went for his sake. Oh my 
grief ! that I should live and Brian be dead ! 

The summary given by modem histories is as follows : 

"Two Kings gained lasting renown during the 
contests with the Norsemen, Malachi the Great, 
who became High King in 980, and Brian, King of the 
province of Munster. Brian in a battle fought in 968 



Notes 20I 

at Sulcoit, north of the Galtee Mountains, defeated 
the Norsemen and put them to flight. This was the 
first of a series of victories against the raiders who 
from this time forward are generally spoken of as 
Danes, though they came from Norway as well as 
Denmark. 

" Malachi, the High King, was at the same time mak- 
ing attacks on the invaders' settlements in Dublin and 
as far north as the Boyne. He took Dublin in 996, 
winning there among other spoils the golden ring of 
a Danish chief. Two such strong personalities as 
Malachi and Brian, rulers of provinces which had long 
been rivals, could hardly be expected to live in 
brotherly union and concord. We find them constantly 
at strife, even when both were fighting against the 
common foe. They finally agreed to divide Ireland 
between them, Malachi taking the northern part and 
handing over the southern to Brian. This arrange- 
ment was made in 998, and not unnaturally gave great 
offence to the King of Leinster whose territory lay in 
the region assigned by Malachi to Brian. The King 
of Leinster made an alliance with the Danes of Dublin 
and determined to resist Brian's authority. Brian and 
Malachi immediately gathered an army and met and 
defeated the united armies of the King of Leinster and 
the Danes in one of the valleys of the Wicklow hills, 
Glenmama. 

"Brian married Gormleith (Gormley), sister of the 
King of Leinster and widow of a former chief of the 
Danes, whose son Sitric was now their acknowledged 
leader. This alliance won over to Brian's side both the 



202 Notes 

King of Leinster and the Danes of Dublin, and Brian 
presently felt strong enough to lead an army northward 
towards Tara to try conclusions with Malachi for the 
High Kingship of Ireland. Malachi recognised that 
his opponent was too strong for him and made his sub- 
mission. This took place in the year 1002, and for the 
next twelve years, until he was slain at the battle of 
Clontarf, Brian was recognised as the High King of 
Ireland." 

That is what the histories tell, and they tell also 
of the woman who walked all Ireland with a gold ring 
in her hand; though I have changed the rich clothes 
of the legend for rags, thinking them nearer to the 
inner meaning of the parable. As to the quarrel 
between Brian and the King of Leinster, the books say : 

"As part of his tribute the Leinster King was bring- 
ing to Kincora three pine trees for ships' masts, and 
among the carriers some dispute arose as to who was to 
be in the first place. To end the dispute the King 
himself took the first place, and in his exertions in 
carrying the tree, one of the silver buttons of his tunic 
had been torn off. At Kincora he handed the tunic to 
his sister Gormleith, asking her to sew on the displaced 
button; but the lady, instead, heaped reproaches 
on him for being a mere vassal, and angrily flung 
the tunic into the fire. Her taunting words irritated 
Maelmora, and his irritation was soon shown. Look- 
ing on at a game of chess which was being played 
between Murrough and his cousin Conaing, Maelmora 
suggested a move which ended in Murrough losing the 



Notes 203 

game. Murrough angrily remarked, 'That was like 
the advice you gave the Danes which lost them Glen- 
mama.' Maelmora with equal anger replied, 'I will 
now give them advice and they shall not be defeated.' 
* Then' said Murrough, ' you had better remind them 
to have a yew tree ready for your reception.* For 
Maelmora had hidden in a yew tree after his defeat at 
Glenmama. In bitterness of heart and in secret 
Maelmora left Kincora. He decided to revolt and 
was joined by the Dublin Danes. The battle of 
Clontarf was the result. Brian was killed there, 
and Maelmora, but the Danes were driven from Ireland 
for ever. 

"In bringing together the Danes for Clontarf 
nobody had been more active than Gormleith. Since 
Maelmora's visit to Kincora she had been repudiated 
by Brian and had become so 'grim' against him that 
she wished him dead. She had sent her son Sitric 
to the Danish leaders to beg their assistance. The 
two best known of these leaders were Brodar, Earl of 
Man, and Sigurd, Earl of Orkney. Both made it a 
condition to be acknowledged King of Ireland if Brian 
were defeated and slain, and also to get Gormleith in 
marriage . . . though the latter was now old, and it is 
unlikely that they were attracted by her doubtful 
virtue or coveted her faded charms." 

So far the histories, founded, one must think, on the 
legends of the people. Around Kincora such legends 
still linger. One is shown where Brian's palace was, 
and where the fish were caught for his use, and told of 



204 Notes 

all his cellars and strong-rooms and passages, some of 
them underground. And a man in armour is seen 
now and again on the roads near the green mound 
where the palace stood, who is, it may be, the walking 
shadow of the High King. 

When Kincora was first produced in Dublin, an old 
farmer came all the way from Killaloe near Kincora 
*to see it, and he went away sad because as he said 
** Brian ought not to have married that woman, but to 
have been content with a nice quiet girl from his own 
district." 

As to the Danes, the people tell me, '*The reason of 
the wisps and the fires on Saint John's Eve is that one 
time long ago the Danes came and took the country 
and conquered it, and they put a soldier to mind every 
house through the whole country. And at last the 
people made up their minds that on one night they 
would kill the soldiers. So they did as they said, and 
there was n't one left, and that is why they light the 
wisps ever since. It was Brian Boroihme (Boru) was 
the first to light them. There was not much of an army 
left to the Danes that time, for he made a great scatter 
of them. A great man he was, and his own son was 
as good, that is Murrough. It was the wife brought 
him to his end, Gormleith. She was for war, and he 
was all for peace. And he got to be very pious, too 
pious, and old, and she got tired of that." And I am 
told of the last battle. "Clontarf was on the head 
of a game of chess. The generals of the Danes were 
beaten at it, and they were vexed. It was Brodar, 



Notes 20S 

that the Brodericks are descended from, that put a 
dagger through Brian's heart, and he attending to his 
prayers. What the Danes left in Ireland were hens 
and weasels. And when the cock crows in the morn- 
ing the country people will always say, ' It is for Den- 
mark they are crowing; crowing they are to be back 
in Denmark.' " 

But the Danes are often mixed up with the Tuatha 
de Danaan, the old gods, the invisible inhabitants of 
the forths, as in a story I have been told of the battle 
of Aughrim. "The Danes were dancing in the forths 
around Aughrim the night after the battle. Their 
ancestors were driven out of Ireland before ; and they 
were glad when they saw those that had put them out 
put out themselves, and every one of them skivered." 

The small size of our stage and our small number of 
players forced me to do away with what our people 
call "the middling class," and I have used but 
servants and kings. As to their language, I have, 
to the grief of my printers, used the dialect spoken by 
many of my neighbours, who are though it may be 
by long descent, belonging to the families of kings. 

DERVORGILLA 

Dervorgilla, daughter of the King of Meath, wife of 
O'Rourke, King of Breffny, was taken away, willingly 
or unwillingly, by Diarmuid MacMurrough, King of 
Leinster, in the year 1152. O'Rourke and his friends 
invaded Leinster in revenge, and in the wars which fol- 
lowed, Diarmuid, driven from Ireland, appealed for help 



2o6 Notes 

to Henry II of England, and was given an army under 
Strongbow, to whom Diarmuid promised Leinster 
as reward. Itls so the English were first brought into 
Ireland. Dervorgilla, having outlived O'Rourke and 
Diarmuid and Henry and Strongbow, is said to have 
died at the Abbey of Mellifont, near Drogheda, in the 
year 1193, aged 85. 

That is how the story is told in the histories. And 
I have heard in Kiltartan: " Dervorgilla was a red- 
haired woman, and it was she put the great curse on 
Ireland, bringing in the English through Mac- 
Murrough, that she went to from O'Rourke. It was 
to Henry the Second MacMurrough went, and he sent 
Strongbow, and they stopped in Ireland ever since. 
But who knows but another race might be worse, such 
as the Spaniards that were scattered along the whole 
coast of Connacht at the time of the Armada? And 
the laws are good enough. I heard it said the English 
will be dug out of their graves one day for the sake of 
their law. As to Dervorgilla, she was not brought 
away by force, she went to MacMurrough herself. 
For there are men in the world that have a coaxing 
way, and sometimes women are weak." 



Dates and casts oj the first production of these plays 
at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. 

Grania has not yet been produced. 

KiNCORA. This revised version of Kincora was pro- 
duced February ii, 1909, with the following cast: 



Brian . 

Maelmora 

Malachi 

Sitric . 

Murrough 

Brennain 

Rury . 

Phelan 

Gormleith 

Beggar 



Arthur Sinclair 

Sydney J. Morgan 

Ambrose Power 

U. Wright 

Fred 0' Donovan 

J. M. Kerrigan 

J. H. Dunne 

J. A. O'Rourke 

Sara Allgood 

Maire O'Neill 



Dervorgilla was produced October 31, 1907, with 
the following cast : 



Dervorgilla 








. Sara Allgood 


Mona . 








Maire O'Neill 


Mamie, 








Brigit O'Dempsey 


Flann 








F. J. Fay 


Songmaker , 








W. G. Fay 


A Boy . 








Arthur Sinclair 


Another 








J. M. Kerrigan 


Another 








J. A. O'ROURKE 



207 



ll 



Plays of Moliere 

Translated by 

Curtis Hidden Page 

Late Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures 
in Columbia University 

4 volumes, Cr. 8vo 

Les Femmes Savantes 

(The Learned Ladies) 

The Learned Ladies, under which title Curtis Hidden 
Page's masterly translation of Moliere 's " Les Femmes 
Savantes " is published, is a more matured dramatic satire 
than " Les Precieuses Ridicules," its predecessor. The 
intellectual tone of the French salons has degenerated into 
mere affectation under the poorly qualified imitators of 
the H6tel de Rambouillet. There was a pretension of 
learning, an artificiality of language, an absence of good 
sense that must have been profoundly irritating to one so 
free from affectation as the great genius of French comedy. 
Such a conditio- of things Moliere presents in this master- 
piece, though arrayed against it are the sober forces of 
common-sense and sincerity, which in the end triumph. 

Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme 

(The Tradesman Turned Gentleman) 

This play, produced in the maturity of Moliere's dra- 
matic power, is a lesson of good sense to those who suffer 
from the social ambition of rising above their proper rank. 
The satire is more developed and brilliant than in Georges 
Dandin, which preceded it. 



New York G. P. Putnam's Sons London 



Plays of Moliere 

Translated by 

Curtis Hidden Page 

Late Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures 
in Columbia University 

4 volumes. Cr. 8vo 

Les Precieuses Ridicules 

(The Affected Misses) 

Le Medecin malgre Lui 

(The Doctor by Compulsion) 

The above two volumes in one 

The Affected Misses (Les Precieuses Ridicules), while 
lashing the arrogance and folly and artificial enthusiasm 
for learning of the salons, has all the vivacity, abandon, 
and spontaneity of Moliere's early plays. The resource- 
ful valets, impersonating people of station and imposing 
upon the affected ladies, can claim an ancestry stretching 
back through the Italian comedy of masks to the slaves 
of Latin comedy. But Moliere, creative genius that he 
was, infused vitality into the traditional type m ttiis 
drama, raising farce to the dignity of comedy. Ihe 
Doctor hy Compulsion is a rollicking comedy, in which tne 
dramatist singled out for satire a profession that is still 
the recipient of occasional gibes— that of the doctor. 

Tartuffe 



or 



The Hypocrite 

Into this play Moliere put more of his inner conviction 
than into any other play that came from his pen, and it 
will remain the enduring example of the successful depic- 
tion of hypocrisy in its most odious form. The play was 
produced after persistent protest from members of the 
clergy, who feared the effect of this exposure of greed and 
sensuality posing as sanctity. ^^^^^^^^^ 

New York G. P. Putnam*S SonS London 



The Nun of Kent 



Dramas of Importance 

Plays 

The Silver Box— Joy— Strife 

By John Galsworthy 

Author of " The Country House," etc. 
Crown 8vo. $1 .35 net 

" By common consent, London has witnessed this week 
a play of serious importance, not approached by any other 
book or drama of the season, John Galsworthy's * The 
Strife.* It is regarded not merely as a remarkable social 
document of significance, but as a creation which, while of 
the most modern realism, is yet classic in its pronounced 
art and exalted philosophy. The play shows the types of 
the strongest men as victims of comical events and of 
weaker men. It will be produced in America, where, on 
account of its realistic treatment of the subject of labor 
union, it is sure to be a sensation." — Special cable dispatch 
to N. Y. Times. 

A 

Drama 

By Grace Denio Litchfield 

Author of "Baldur the Beautiful," etc. 
Crown 8vo. $1.0O net 

" In this drama the pure essentials of dramatic' writing 
are rarely blended. . . . The foundation for the stirring 
play is a pathetic episode given in Froude's Henry VIII. • . . 

" The lines of the poem, while full of thought, are also 
characterized by fervor and beauty. The strength of the 
play is centred upon a few characters. ... * The Nun 
of Kent ' may be described as a fascinating dramatic 
story." — Baltimore News. 

Yzdra 

A Tragedy in Three Acts 

By Louis V. Ledoux 

Crown 8vo, Cloth. $1.25 net 

*' There are both grace and strength in this drama and 
it also possesses the movem.ent and spirit needed for pres- 
entation upon the stage. Some of the figures used are 
striking and beautiful, quite free from excess, and some- 
times almost austere in their restraint. The characters 
are clearly individualized and a just balance is preserved 
in the action." — The Outlook, New York. 

New York G. P. Putnam's SonS London 





















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